McMegan is so wrong, that she’s even wrong when she links to her husband.
This is getting to be like a game of the dozens.
Read a fucking book.
mistermix has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2010.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 27 Comments
This post is in: Technically True but Collectively Nonsense
McMegan is so wrong, that she’s even wrong when she links to her husband.
This is getting to be like a game of the dozens.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 32 Comments
This post is in: Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment
I don’t know what’s worse about this local news story, the behavior of the reporter. Rick Boone, when confronting some alleged prostitutes:
You will see Boone confront the woman while she is being stuffed in the back of the police car. When she spits on Boone’s microphone, he asks, (at 1:59 on the video) “You want $20 for that?”
With the microphone still sticking in her face, he said, “Does that taste good?”
At 2:10 he asks, “What does it feel like to be a hooker?”
At 2:15 she knocks the microphone out of his hands, he picks it up shoves it back in her face and says, and “you want this you want to use this?”
or the attitude of his news director:
Obviously, we didn’t tell Rick to go out and try to get an alleged prostitute to spit on him. He asked provocative questions, and she reacted by attacking him — kicking and spitting at him. (FYI, we have chosen not to file charges.) […]
This may be hard for some ivory tower academics to grasp, but we don’t sit around judging what we esteem to be worthy of public consumption. We cover what our viewers tell us they want to see, and we do it in a way that we think viewers will appreciate and embrace. We actually show a lot of raw material. Sometimes, we even show viewers inside things about our staff, knowing that they appreciate our honesty.
This is part of a story about a Poynter Institute focus group that, unsurprisingly, “said they wanted more coverage of serious political issues and they wanted a lot less crime news, unless the crime had real importance to a lot of people.” (via)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 84 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity, Our Failed Media Experiment
In an otherwise good column about Marty Peretz and associated Islamophobes, Nick Kristof says this:
This is one of those times that test our values, a bit like the shameful interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the disgraceful refusal to accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
No it isn’t, not even remotely. This isn’t life and death (which is was for some Jewish refugees), nor is anyone seriously contemplating stripping Muslims of their property and shipping them to concentration camps in the desert.
We’re arguing about where people can build a fucking church. When you amp up the drama about it, you’re playing the haters’ game — they’re the ones who want to take a discussion that should be happening at the local zoning board and turn it into a national debate about our very survival.
This Generation’s Hiroshima, Gettysburg and Nagasaki, Rolled Into OnePost + Comments (84)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 47 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, Assholes
A great thinker muses (via):
“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”
Perhaps he’s influenced by the company he keeps:
A man who has said the government should not allow any mosques to be built in America and compared American Muslims to neo-Nazis is scheduled to speak at the Values Voter Summit in Washington next week, alongside Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, among other prominent Republicans.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 26 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
At 2:30 this morning, near Syracuse, a double-decker commercial bus on the wrong road slammed into a low bridge, killing 4 people. When I read that story, it brought to mind the asinine statement by Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, who thinks that his airplanes only need one pilot.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 35 Comments
This post is in: War
Less said the better
The bill unpaid, the dead letter,
No roses at the end
Of Smith, my friend.
Last words don’t matter,
And there are none to flatter.
Words will not fill the post
Of Smith, the ghost.
For Smith, our brother,
Only son of loving mother,
The ocean lifted, stirred,
Leaving no word.
John Pudney
This was anthologized in the Norton Book of Modern War, edited by Paul Fussell. If you want to understand the depth of the failure of tragic imagination in the current wars, any of Fussell’s books on war are well worth a read.
I think the answer to DougJ’s question about the commemoration of December 7 is that there was so much death in that war — on average, 419 per day. When every day was a terrible day for so many people, commemorating one would be pointless. More importantly, the day worth remembering is the day the war ends, not the day it begins.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 50 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Following up on E.D.’s post about Craigslist, I find it interesting that neither Reihan Salam nor Dana Boyd want to grasp the nettle, which is that the fundamental issue underlying the Craigslist dust-up is the prohibition of prostitution.
The way that both dance around the issue is interesting. Salam focuses on how Craigslist is a small company and a boon to consumers, then simply quotes Boyd instead of providing further argument. Boyd concentrates on the “sex-power industry” that keeps women down. Her fundamental thesis is that it’s a waste of law enforcement resources to mess with Craigslist, which was making a bad situation a little better for the indy sex workers.
In other words, Salam, who writes at the National Review, thinks Craigslist deserves special treatment because of its entrepreneurial spirit and the value created by a small business. Boyd, who contributes to Huffington Post, says Craigslist should be treated differently because they are on the side of the oppressed sex worker enslaved by an uncaring industry. It’s different bait for different fish, but both cases just amount to special pleading.
What’s needed here isn’t an exception for the right sort of people — we need to change the laws that govern prostitutes. The legalization of small-scale independent sex work will free up police resources to go after the sex-power industry, and it will get cops off the back of a hard-working small businessman. I imagine that Salam didn’t make that argument because his audience at the National Review can’t stomach the immorality of prostitution, just as Boyd’s audience can’t abide the exploitation of women which they believe is at the heart of sex work.
So many pixels are wasted in the pundit business arguing that good people shouldn’t have to follow the law of the land, when what ought to be argued is that the law of the land needs to change so good people can get on with their lives free of state interference.