February 27, 2008
National Review Founder William F. Buckley Jr. Dies
Conservative icon and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. died this morning at the age of 82 at his home in Stamford, Conn. Citing his son Christopher, the New York Times reports that Buckley suffered from diabetes and emphysema, although the exact cause of his death is not yet known. He was reportedly found at his desk at home. "He might have been working on a column," his son said.
At The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez posted a tribute to the National Review's "dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder":
He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.
As you might expect, we'll have much more to say here and in NR in the coming days and weeks and months. For now: Thank you, Bill. God bless you, now with your dear Pat. Our deepest condolences to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. And our fervent prayer that we continue to do WFB's life's work justice.
Buckley's final column, posted on NRO Feb. 2, is a recap of the preceding debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in Hollywood. Reflecting his love of the written word, the column is largely an homage to "Fowler's Modern English Usage."
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February 25, 2008
If You Needed Proof That This Primary Has Lasted Too Long...
... look no further than Time, where political reporters Mark Halperin and Joe Klein took a break from handicapping the presidential horse race last night to critique the red carpet fashions at the 80th Annual Academy Awards.
Seriously.
(In case you were wondering, Halperin finds Daniel Day-Lewis "wolfishly handsome" and Klein's a "sucker" for women like Tilda Swinton.)
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February 21, 2008
West Point Disputes Attrition Rate In FP Report
On Tuesday, we wrote about a Foreign Policy magazine and Center for a New American Security [PDF] survey of active-duty and retired military officers that found growing concern about the strength of America's armed forces. We attributed the following statistic to FP's report on the survey:
According to Foreign Policy, nearly 60 percent of the West Point class of 2002 left active duty at their first chance to opt out, in 2007.
The United States Military Academy, better known as West Point, disputes that figure, calling it: "Hogwash. Gibberish. Misinformation."
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February 05, 2008
White House Courting Comedy Controversy Again
After playing it safe with dead-guy impressionist Rich Little last year, the White House has decided on a, um, more contemporary choice for this year's White House Correspondents Dinner entertainment: late-night talk-show host Craig Ferguson.
Ferguson is a fine choice for the dinner because he's proved to actually be funny, in spite of his introduction to American audiences on "The Drew Carey Show." And the cherry on top? The Scotsman just became an American citizen.
"As soon as I became an American I thought, you know what is going to happen, I am going to get jury duty or the CIA is going to get in touch and get me to assassinate a foreign state or something like that. Something boring," Ferguson told his audience on the show that aired last night. "Anyway, my first job as an American citizen, I can exclusively reveal tonight, is performing at the White House Correspondents Dinner this year. I'm doing it!"
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January 17, 2008
WH '08: The MSNBC Pile-On (Updated)
First, the disclosure: MSNBC is a content partner of National Journal.
Thanks to a swirl of big economic news and the Republican National Committee's Winter Meeting (our post on that goes up tomorrow), we're a little late with the reaction to Tuesday night's Democratic candidates debate that we promised. If you watched it, you'll recall that moderators Brian Williams and Tim Russert started off the forum in Vegas with questions about the race tiff between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama -- which both sides had by then declared over. (If you missed it, see our liveblog coverage.)
More to some viewers' chagrin, Williams brought up the dirty-politicking, false Internet rumors about Obama's secret Islamofascist plot to take over the country.
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Mr. Colbert Goes To The Smithsonian
Is there anything Stephen Colbert can't do with a little prodding (and a lot of shouting) on his Comedy Central talk show? After several days of needling by the faux-conservative pundit, Washington's own notoriously buttoned-up Smithsonian Institution "agreed to go along with the joke" this week and hang Colbert's "triple portrait" for a limited time at the National Portrait Gallery.
In several recent episodes of the "Colbert Report," the would-be presidential candidate urged the Smithsonian to treat him as a "national treasure" and offered to donate his portrait, which actually features three different images of Colbert, to the National Museum of American History. The director of that museum, perhaps not willing to endure months of taunting by the often relentless comedian, compromised and offered the painting to the National Portrait Gallery, which "after much 'discussion'" agreed to hang it in an "appropriate place" -- between the bathrooms and above the water fountain near its "America's Presidents" exhibit.
AP has more on this story. If you want to see the portrait, act quickly: The Smithsonian is taking great pains to let everyone know this little charade won't last forever. The museum has details here.
Photo by Amy Baskette for the National Portrait Gallery
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January 11, 2008
Thank God For C-SPAN
In predictable fashion, all the news nets are on the missing Marine story -- even CNN International, which had been promising live coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's press conference with the freed Colombian rebels.
If you're looking for something more newsy to watch, C-SPAN2 is airing a live Woodrow Wilson Center briefing, topic: Iran.
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January 09, 2008
WH '08: Don't (!!!) Call It A Comeback
"Over the last week, I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," a relieved and triumphant Hillary Rodham Clinton told a roaring crowd of supporters last night.
Today's campaign news cycle is all about how the media and pundits boo-boo'd so badly, having declared Clinton's campaign DOA heading into the New Hampshire primary and John McCain out for the count for the last six months running. There's a sea of red faces out there but, we contend, for the wrong reason.
Last we checked, journalism was about reporting facts, not predicting them. Some amount of prognostication can be quite useful for contextualizing the news. But when so many talking heads call a close contest well before the first vote tallies come in, what's the point of that, exactly? It seems as if egos, and not the public, are the ones getting served.
Leave it to quirky, independent-minded Granite Staters to tell the rest of the country: Not so fast.
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January 07, 2008
N.H. Countdown: Of Knuckleheads, Huckaburgers & Crybabies
As much as you might resent the presidential candidates for forcing you to confront the 2008 election so early, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for them. Most are sleep-deprived and anxious just four days after the Iowa caucuses, the results of which forced some candidates to retune their campaign strategies on the run.
This is especially true for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is locked in a super-tight battle for first in tomorrow's New Hampshire primary, polls released today show. Her decisive loss to Barack Obama in Iowa seemed to send her camp into a tailspin. There are strong hints that if she is humiliated in the Granite State, a personnel shuffle will follow.
A mixture of anxiety, adrenaline and sheer physical exhaustion may explain why we've seen such a range of emotions from Clinton this week. First, she feistily returned fire at rivals Obama and John Edwards at the ABC/Facebook debate on Saturday -- a performance that indicated she wasn't going to take the onslaught of attacks lying down.
An uncharacteristically emotional moment for her today is sucking up most of the oxygen in coverage of New Hampshire. That she seemed to choke up when asked about the hardships of campaigning by a voter raises questions about her gender again. Those questions have distracted the media before, but the Clinton Crying story comes less than 24 hours before Granite Staters go to the polls.
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Kristol's NYT Column Debuts, World Doesn't End
Weekly Standard editor William Kristol's first column for the New York Times appeared this morning. As far as we can tell, no reader's head has spontaneously combusted.
The Times' Dec. 30 announcement that Kristol would be joining the Grey Lady's cabal of regular columnists rocked the liberal blogosphere. "Just shoot me," moaned The Nation's Katha Pollitt. "Kristol is a war-monger and a hate-monger," shouted author Jane Smiley, after announcing she was going to boycott the Times.
For whatever reason, liberals seem to get more shouty about conservative media than vice-versa. See: John Dickerson's account of Granite Staters' rough treatment of Bill O'Reilly. (We should note that Bill gave as good as he got.) And it's not like we ever see booing crowds flipping the bird whenever Maureen Dowd comes to town.
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January 02, 2008
HappyIowaNewIowaYearIowa
In case you missed it, and there's pretty much no chance you have, the Iowa caucuses are tomorrow, Jan. 3, more than eight months (!) before the first party nominating convention will be held. The ground in both fields has shifted dramatically this month alone, which indicates that what the tiny percentage of Iowans who caucus tomorrow have to say will probably not hold.
Nonetheless, there are more media outlets on the ground in Iowa today than ever before, and coverage is wall-to-wall. We've explained before why Iowa polls are unreliable. The new Register surveys, which show Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in the lead, were conducted Dec. 27-30, when enough Iowans to skew the results were probably traveling and therefore were unable to pick up the phone. There are also questions about whether Iowans, who by some accounts are receiving more than one campaign-related phone call a night, are still picking up their phones at all. (Think about it: Would you?)
Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal -- a new National Journal Group colleague (welcome!) -- has some must-read explanations of Iowa polling.
Moreover, there are long-lingering questions about the actual significance of the Iowa caucuses. Democratic caucus-goers tend to be more liberal than primary voters elsewhere, and GOP caucus-goers more conservative. Fewer than 10 percent of Iowans, who are overwhelmingly white, participate, but the outsized media coverage arguably has a king-making effect. Those candidates who don't place in the top five might be considered road kill by Friday morning, which could doom them in other states where they are faring better.
Georgetown's Christopher Hull crunches the numbers in his new book, "Grassroots Rules" (seriously, there are charts and graphs). If you want to understand Iowa's effect on party nominations, read this book. His ultimate conclusion is that Iowa is important. But: "Controlling for New Hampshire results and measures of exhibition season performance, Iowa is not a statistically significant predictor of overall primary performance."
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December 17, 2007
World Leaders Watch: The Economy, Stupid
To no one's surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that he accepts his top aide's offer of the prime minister's slot should Dmitry Medvedev win the presidency in March. Medvedev is Putin's longtime aide and handpicked successor for the presidency -- an office Putin is barred by law from seeking again.
"If the citizens of Russia show trust in Dmitry Medvedev and elect him the new president, I would be ready to continue our joint work as prime minister without changing the distribution of authority between the positions," Putin said in an address to his United Russia party.
Putin sought to allay concerns that the coming election would amount to just moving the deck chairs, but few Russians are under the illusion that Putin's power would really be capped by the traditional bounds of the much-weaker prime minister's post. Nonetheless, Medvedev, who was formally nominated by United Russia today, is assured a decisive victory in the March 2 vote. Why hasn't Putin's authoritarian power-grabbing dented his popularity? The economy.
Russians can forgive Putin his flaws because their economy is rocketing -- even if Putin isn't exactly responsible for that trend. Here in the United States, the perception that the economy is flagging is threatening to upend next year's elections -- and President Bush's legacy. For the second time this month, Bush devoted a public address to the economy in an attempt to persuade the public that things weren't as dire as they seemed.
"My attitude was if you're paying taxes you ought to get tax relief," Bush told the Rotary Club in Fredericksburg, Va., recalling concerns about the economy after the 9/11 attacks. "If you think about where we were, coming out of 2001, and where we are today, you can't help but say the plan worked.
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December 03, 2007
How Don Imus Is Ruining Christmas
John Gibson is wrong -- it isn't secularists who are ruining the holidays.
From the Elizabethton (Tenn.) Star: "One new addition to this year's parade was not well received by many. Santa Claus was not allowed to greet the crowd with his traditional 'ho, ho, ho.' Instead, Santa was told to say, 'ha, ha, ha.'"
Click here if you haven't already guessed the reason.
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Yet Another Presidential Candidates Debate
Thanks to Wonkette, we just learned that CNN/Los Angeles Times/Politico are hosting a Republican candidates debate on Jan. 30, forcing us to send out a third revised debate schedule to the Gaters in a week. Can we all agree to cap the debates now? Obviously, we get why they are important and useful, otherwise we wouldn't be covering them, but some poor decision-making on the part of certain debate producers (hi, CNN) has us questioning our will to live continue paying as much attention as we are.
Alas, paying attention is why we get paid the big bucks. Tune in tomorrow for coverage of NPR's Democrats' debate. We expect the questions to be smarter and fairer than in forums past, so it will certainly be worth following. Also worth reading: the Times' Tim Rutten's indictment of last week's CNN/YouTube debate.
[UPDATE 5:19] Ways in which the media are unhelpful to electoral politics Part II: "Hardball" has image consultant John Neffinger on as a guest for the umpteenth time to speculate wildly about the presidential candidates based on their body language, facial expressions and other attributes vital to running the world's largest superpower.
"He looks like Kevin Spacey, don't you think?" Chris Matthews just said of Mike Huckabee.
We're doomed.
-JANE ROH
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November 29, 2007
Republican Debate Postmortem: A Bad Night For CNN
CNN's sorry, so very sorry, for the Clinton plant at last night's debate.
"We regret this, and apologize to the Republican candidates. We never would have used the General's question had we known that he was connected to any presidential candidate," said CNN exec David Bohrman.
"The Most Trusted Name In News" protests that it checked out retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr, the gay serviceman who asked the Republican candidates about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," to make sure he had not contributed to any of the candidates. But if CNN's producers had just, say, Googled the guy, they would have found that he is a member of Hillary Rodham Clinton's LGBT steering committee. Bloggers did, and they were alerting the media about it before the debate was over.
Let's assume that CNN tried its level best to ensure a fair and balanced debate for the Republicans. The network's defense of how it not only let the Kerr question through without full disclosure but gave him five minutes on the floor for follow-up rings pretty weak because of the swiftness and ease with which bloggers found him out. As I noted in my liveblog coverage yesterday, conservatives were already dubious about whether they would be treated fairly at last night's forum, and afterward, a few prominent bloggers agreed they were not.
What it comes down to is this: The debate last night was first and foremost about Republican primary voters, not the general electorate. The reasonable thing to have done was make sure there were plenty of questions being asked by Republicans on issues of primary concern to Republicans. Those illegal immigration questions were a good start, but the evening took several bizarre turns as the night went on. Since the debate ended, conservative bloggers have found out the following:
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November 27, 2007
The Writers Strike: Good For Candidates, Bad For Voters
When the Writers Guild of America launched its nationwide strike four weeks ago, The Gate sort of joked that the extended hiatus for late-night talk shows and political satires would spell doom for Washington. But now that it's been nearly a month since the last new "Daily Show" episode, we're starting to get nervous... seriously.
With the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and Jan. 8 New Hampshire primaries rapidly approaching, the presidential campaigns have shifted into high gear. And with at least eight debates scheduled between now and Christmas, the media's coverage of the campaigns has reached a fever pitch. Meanwhile, the candidates and those responsible for covering them in the press are going about their business free from the scrutinizing eyes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and "Saturday Night Live." That's not just bad for comedy -- it's bad for democracy.
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November 19, 2007
Diamonds Or Pearls, Redux
Remember that audience member question from the Las Vegas Democratic candidates debate that we slammed? Turns out that while young Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval dreamed up the diamonds vs. pearls question, it was a) among several substantive questions she submitted, and b) in response to CNN's request for a "light" question, The Caucus reports. As the debate was winding down, another audience member asked a question about Yucca Mountain, one of the topics Parra-Sandoval was most eager to raise. At a CNN producer's request, when it was Parra-Sandoval's turn to query the candidates she went with that silly jewelry question.
TPM's Greg Sargent notes that while Parra-Sandoval ultimately agreed to ask the question of Hillary Rodham Clinton, CNN betrayed shady news judgment by picking it. In the meantime, Parra-Sandoval, an honors scholarship student and Princeton fellowship winner, is being hounded online and elsewhere for her performance.
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November 15, 2007
Rove Joins The Fourth Estate
President Bush's "Boy Genius" has crossed over to the dark side -- the mainstream media, that is.
The Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko posted a press release from Newsweek earlier today announcing that former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove would join the magazine as an op-ed contributor. Pointing to former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos as a model, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham explained the magazine's decision: "Whether one agrees or disagrees with Karl, there is no arguing that he has been a critical player in the political world with insights and experiences that we think will give our readers something unique."
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November 12, 2007
Help Wanted In Baghdad
USA Today has had an ad up for an Iraq correspondent for three weeks. Why so few takers? Hmm, let's see...
Still, it's a little surprising that a major daily like USAT is having so much trouble filling this job -- if that's indeed the case. (A call to the newspaper's spokeswoman was not immediately returned.) (UPDATE: The job has been filled, said a spokeswoman who admitted that applications were not exactly pouring in.) Journalists generally don't go into this field to cover town hall meetings, even if that's where many of them start off. The way the war has been run has proved incredibly frustrating to the reporters covering it, yet those same correspondents continue to return to the line of fire again and again.
Though every moment in Iraq is a pivotal one, now seems an especially keen time to spend on the ground. The rate of rocket attacks has dropped significantly, and the government says Iraqis who fled previous violence are starting to return home.
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November 08, 2007
WGA Strike: Breaking Washington's Funny Bone
As protesting TV and film writers take to the picket lines in Los Angeles and New York, the atmosphere in Washington this week is unusually quiet. Perhaps a little too quiet.
On the surface, the Writers Guild of America strike hitting the entertainment industry would seem of little consequence in the nation's capital. But consider this: The first casualties in the WGA strike have been the late-night talk shows and comedies that constitute an unofficial system of checks and balances on Washington. Without those programs, this town is in serious danger of taking itself even more seriously than it already does.
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November 02, 2007
Bias & The Media: Everything You Suspect Is True
Looking back on the past year, the most surprising development of Campaign '08 so far has to be the crash and burn of Sen. John McCain. Less than a full presidential election cycle ago, the Arizona Republican's popularity so transcended party lines that John Kerry sought him out as a running mate.
Today, the one-time front-runner is nearly broke, has a skeletal campaign staff and is trailing badly in the polls. When the campaigns started to get under way earlier this year, every other headline about McCain had to do with his dogged support for President Bush's Iraq war policy despite overwhelmingly pessimistic coverage of the "surge" strategy. The formerly adoring political press, which McCain used to refer to as "my base," seemed to be punishing the lawmaker they once hailed as a maverick.
Looks like that hunch was right.
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September 27, 2007
Juan Williams: Bill O'Reilly Not A Racist
UPDATED.
We meant to go up with something on the Bill O'Reilly controversy du jour on Tuesday, but more pressing news did not permit. The Lede beat us to it: "Mr. Reilly [sic] is guilty of being sheltered, old-fashioned and possibly exhibiting a casual racism." Maybe. We decided to put the question to his sparring partner in the now-infamous interview, NPR's Juan Williams.
Williams, a prominent political journalist who is also black, is the liberal counterpoint on "FOX News Sunday." We reached him by phone on Tuesday, and asked if he thought O'Reilly was a racist. His answer was, "No."
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September 20, 2007
Jena Puts Race Back In The Headlines... For Now
CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and Tony Harris have been waxing poetic about the state of race relations today from Jena, La., where thousands, possibly tens of thousands, have gathered to protest criminal charges brought against seven black teens who jumped a white classmate last year.
This latest national Rodney King moment reminds us of the early days of the Duke lacrosse rape case, which inspired intense soul-searching about the state of race relations in this country that quickly came to a halt once it became clear the accusations were a whole lot of bunk. The New York Times, a primary driver of the race narrative in that story, never revisited the issue in its subsequent reporting (though the ombudsman did) after the charges were dropped and DA Mike Nifong was stripped of all credibility.
The Jena case may have its own dodgy prosecutor. The LaSalle Parish District Attorney, Reed Walters, initiated the national outcry over this case when he charged the seven high school students -- including three minors -- with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. Given the facts, his effort to lock the teens up until they reach middle age seems both patently foolish and grossly punitive. Walters eventually scaled back the charges to aggravated battery, but the damage was done.
Enter Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
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September 19, 2007
Rather Sues CBS For $70 Million
More than two years after being forced out as anchor of the "CBS Evening News," Dan Rather remains (to borrow one of his Texas colloquialisms) "madder than a rained-on rooster."
The New York Times is reporting that Rather has filed suit today against his former employers to the tune of $70 million. He claims that the network robbed him of his allotted airtime on "60 Minutes" and made him a "scapegoat" in the controversy surrounding a now-discredited 2004 report on that program which suggested that President Bush shirked his National Guard service.
CBS appointed an independent panel headed by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to investigate the news division's conduct in broadcasting the story. Rather insists that the ensuing report was "biased" and was designed to hang him out to dry in order to "pacify the White House," but, the Times notes, "the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect."
Stay tuned. If this suit makes it to court, the trial could be "nasty enough to gag a buzzard."
See the full Thornburgh report here [PDF], and catch up with Rather in his new, lower-profile gig at HDNet.
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September 18, 2007
Bye-Bye, TimesSelect
We did it!
OK, maybe not. Nonetheless, there will be much cheering come midnight tonight when the New York Times finally scraps its unpopular experiment with paid content, TimesSelect. Readers and columnists alike balked when the company announced two years ago that non-subscribers would be charged $49.95 a year for access to the online columns of Tom Friedman, David Brooks and Maureen Dowd et al. As widely predicted, online readers used to consuming the Times for free did not jump at the chance to cough up bucks for the opinion columns.
According to New York Times Co., the decision to make its columnists available to all was a response to the changing online content environment. The Web site receives more indirect readers than readers who go directly to NYTimes.com, and the company saw "opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue."
Soon before TimesSelect went up, Slate's Timothy Noah conducted an online survey of how much readers would pay for the Times' columnists. Let's just say some were more popular than others.
PaidContent.org has a writeup of the Times Co.'s decision. There is much rejoicing in the blogosphere. Henry Blodget thinks the decision is financially savvy, but Recovering Journalist has mixed feelings.
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August 10, 2007
NYT Supreme Court Correspondent Tangles With Media
The normally staid Supreme Court press corps is getting some catty coverage of late.
The latest example: New York Times SCOTUS correspondent Linda Greenhouse is at the center of a small media brouhaha yet again. The Columbia Journalism Review reports that "Hurricane Linda" threw a fit yesterday when she learned that the panel discussion she was to partake in was being televised by C-SPAN. Forced to choose between kicking out the cameras or proceeding with the panel without the venerated journalist, the event's organizers chose the former.
Witnesses said "Greenhouse walked in, took one look at the lights and the camera equipment, and, 'became infuriated,'" according to CJR's account.
Reporter Gal Beckerman speculates Greenhouse's fit may have something to do with lingering fallout following
Government: After a series of talks, leaders from five of Iraq's political parties issued 