Maureen Dowd has a pleasant piece in January’s Vanity Fair profiling Tina Fey. Dowd tells the little-known story of how Tina Fey got the scar on the side of her face (she was randomly assaulted by a stranger with a knife who slashed her when she was 5) and the more well-known story of Fey’s transformation into “the sex symbol for every man who reads without moving his lips” in Michael Specter’s phrase.
As pointed out by a political pundit:
You can argue about how important a role Obama’s platform played in his victory. But, to read any newspaper in the days following the election, you’d think that Obama had to start crafting his agenda completely from scratch. “He ran on a platform to change the country and its politics,” wrote Washington Post lead political analyst Dan Balz. “Now he must begin to spell out exactly how.” Now? I thought that by the end of the campaign even blind and deaf hermits could tell you that Obama had a plan that could be found at barackobama.com/plan. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that political reporters don’t feel compelled to familiarize themselves with the candidates’ programs in detail, but they should, at minimum, be aware of their existence.
Jonathan Chait at The New Republic – pointing out one of my pet peeves about the immediate post-election coverage.
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Jon Stewart for Senate
If we can’t have Al Franken (and we still might be able to have him), then Jed has a suggestion:
Jon Stewart for Senate
Now that’s a Facebook group that could get some real momentum.
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Santa’s Email
A glimpse into Santa’s email account.
[digg-reddit-me]Fora.tv had a great little video clip of sportscaster Jim Nantz’s role in bringing together George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton for a post-presidential social summit.
The Daily Mail reported over the weekend that a recent study found that left-handers don’t do as well as right-handers in school, but earn more than 5% more every hour once they leave school. This is Drew-bait because an acquaintance of mine who we will for the moment call Drew, but who will remain otherwise anonymous, has a burning hatred for lefties and their sinister ways.
Oddly though, to illustrate this article, The Daily Mail inexplicably chose Robert Redford in his box office bomb The Horse Whisperer.
Let me suggest instead three other prominent lefties who have been in the news recently:
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Jindal 2012 (cont.)
Compare the reactions of Ramnesh Ponnuru and Mark Krikorian to the Washington Post‘s apparently positive profile of Bobby Jindal.
Neither can quite take the article at face value. Ponnuru wonders “if this sort of swooning is really going to be helpful to Gov. Jindal in the long run.”
Krikorian, on the other hand, takes offense at the suggestion that Jindal could be an Obama-like figure. Under the headline “Clueless” which he apparently means to refer to either the Washington Post or the American people, he explains that Obama was merely “a post-American political radical who’s never held a real job and was catapulted to political success because of his race.” So much resentment packed into a single sentence – and so much misinformation. Would a “post-American political radical” choose anything like the pragmatic foreign policy team that Obama has chosen? What exactly does Krikorian consider, “a real job”? Does Krikorian really consider race to be the primary factor in Obama’s rise – or was it one factor among many that had both negative and positive consequences? And how ridicilous is it for a guy whose career is based on whipping up xenophobia to declare race to be some kind of definate asset?
Krikorian makes clear that he doesn’t have a clue.
Ponnuru may find it hard to accept media praise for one of his guys – but Krikorian manages to turn praise into an insult. There’s something so counterproductive about it – these constantly stoked resentments.
Unfortunately, the National Review and the conservative movement at large has far too many Krikorian and far too few Ponnuru’s.
I contacted Michael Pinto, the creator of the Facebook group “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for the US Senate” yesterday to follow-up my post asking who was paying to promote the group on Facebook. I had seen some ads – as had a few other people who had blogged about it. And the number of people in the group shot up significantly over a few days – which led me to presume that there was quite a lot of advertising.
But Michael Pinto assured me in a Facebook message that:
I’m paying for those ads out of my own pocket: I figured if I wasn’t willing to spend at least $100 of my own cash then it wasn’t a worthwhile cause.
Later, he offered:
PS If you need proof I’d be glad to share a screen shot of the ad campaign with you…
Pinto also tells me he was responsible for the “Red State Socialism” graph that made it onto Digg.
My key takeaway: It’s time to start advertising on Facebook.
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The Kingdom of Google
“To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king,” Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor and a former scholar in residence at Google, told me recently. “One reason they’re good at the moment is they live and die on trust, and as soon as you lose trust in Google, it’s over for them.” Google’s claim on our trust is a fragile thing. After all, it’s hard to be a company whose mission is to give people all the information they want and to insist at the same time on deciding what information they get…
Given their clashing and sometimes self-contradictory missions — to obey local laws, repressive or not, and to ensure that information knows no bounds; to do no evil and to be everywhere in a sometimes evil world — Wong and her colleagues at Google seem to be working impressively to put the company’s long-term commitment to free expression above its short-term financial interests. But they won’t be at Google forever, and if history is any guide, they may eventually be replaced with lawyers who are more concerned about corporate profits than about free expression.
Jeffrey Rosen in an insightful look into how Google tries to balance local censorship and its’ commitment to the freedom of information.
I am a bit of a monarchist, in the Federalist sense, as long as there are checks and balances. I’m a big fan of Google, but I realize the problems Tim Wu and Rosen point out are real – and that an organization now that takes steps to protect individuals will not necessarily continue to do so. But Google needs some well-publicized Achilles heel that can be used if it turns evil.
Wasting no time, ads are already running on Facebook promoting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to replace Hillary Clinton as she leaves her Senate seat to become Secretary of State.
techPresident reported yesterday – before ads were running – that Michael Pinto, the creator of the Facebook group described it “an informal grassroots thing.” The group asks supporters of RFK, Jr. to write to Governor Patterson asking him to appoint the young Kennedy to his father’s seat in the Senate.
The group seems to be growing rapidly – from 17 reported as of yesterday to 135 as of this writing.
My question is: who’s paying to promote this?
And how long will it be before Andrew Cuomo and some of the other top candidates have their own Facebook groups?