I’m Better Than Your Kids…
It’s about time someone said it:
#1 Issue in America
On both CNN and Fox News I’ve noticed a similar graphic: the phrase “#1 Issue” or some variant scrolls across the screen or lumbers above or below a featured story about sub-prime mortgages, the cost of fuel, or credit troubles.
Shouldn’t we at least assume by now that the Iraq war is the most crucial issue, since it is one of the greatest causes of America’s economic woes? One naturally follows the other. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Not only that, but we’ve lost at least 44 soldiers in Iraq in April alone. No use in crying over spilled gasoline when Americans are dying.
Christ, people, we need to prioritize.
Question of the Week
Should the superdelegates step in and force Clinton to drop out?
Still Searching for Nazi War Criminals
According to the Independent, Simon Wiesenthal Centre released a list of Nazi war criminals who fled before the Nuremberg trials over 60 years ago.
Most of these criminals, who were either convicted in absentia or are in the process of extradition, are in their 90s. These feeble and aging men were at one time responsible of being part of the deliberate extermination 6,000,000 Jews.
Some of these criminals, like Sandor Kepiro, who had personally been responsible for the deaths of 1,000 Jews in Serbia, or the number one Nazi on the list, Aribert Heim (a.k.a. “Doctor Death”), are among the most reviled, wanted war criminals in history.
Some people are arguing that these men are too old to be tried, while others say they must be tried before they die on their own terms. It simply amazes me that in 2008 we are still seeking the convictions of men who participated in the worst crimes in history.
Information Age Journalism: A Quick Review
Vincent Campbell’s Information Age Journalism is an intelligent examination of the purposes of journalism in a new era of electronic communication. From the processes of the dissemination of news, the values of sources and news gathering, to the ideal of objectivity that is most times (if not all the time) lacking in the field, Campbell calls for a new working definition of journalism, a rare request these days.
With such a great sense of how news and information is selected for public consumption, and after urging the wider intellectual world to rediscover the use of journalism and to begin a new conversation about its current state in relation to its political reality, Campbell fails at his task in one huge way: there is no discussion in his book about electronic news media. If the issue of newsprint media in the “information age” is a task worthy of a book, then why would Campbell miss the mark completely by avoiding one of the greatest forces in the information community?
Campbell makes use of his book in specific instances as he points out the decline of newspaper audiences worldwide, supported by formidable and unnerving evidence that readers are disappearing by the thousands, but he does not speculate just where these people are going, or whether they are even reading news at all. One suggestion – and a natural inclination – would be to say that these vanishing acts are reemerging in the most independent news forums to date.
If Campbell, a lecturer of political communication at the University of Leicester, took on the issue of electronic media, he would have had one of the most complete studies of journalism I’ve read.
What Now?
Have Pennsylvanians really changed anything in this race? Rounding up to a 10 delegates earned in a single digit ten-point victory, Clinton is still claiming this as an important win, a mandate to continue until the convention in August. She will also still try to keep Michigan and Florida on the ballot and attempt to give credence to the argument that Pennsylvania will be a battleground State that only she can win come November. If all else fails, the longer she stays in this race, the easier it will be to secure a VP nomination.
In the coming weeks, if not days, we will begin to hear very audible and serious calls for her to concede. Enter the Clinton supporters, championing her to stay on. This will be ugly, if not entertaining.
Norman Mailer: Classic Novelist, Master Swordsman
It appears that aside from being one of the greatest novelists of the 20th Century, Norman Mailer was also quite the stud.
Harvard University, Mailer’s alma mater and a shinning paradigm of academe, has apparently reached a new low, dredging the bottom of the shithouse ’til metal scraped wood as the school purchased an entire collection of writing that chronicled the novelist’s epic philandering.
Awesome.
Included in the purchase is a 20-page sex-scene detailed by Mailer’s mistress, Carole Mallory, with whom he had an affair during his sixth marriage, and her unpublished novel based on their unscrupulous relations, according to the New York Post.
Harvard, now a manifest player in the porn industry, is said to have purchased the material after Mailer snubbed the administration by selling his archives to the University of Texas for $2.5 million. Great googly-moogly.
Question of the Week
Who would win in a bare-knuckle boxing match… Hillary Clinton or Ann Coulter?
