The NY Times has rejected McCain’s response to Obama’s Op-Ed My Plan For Iraq. I’m not sure if it was because McCain had his piece delivered on a scroll tied to the leg or a carrier pigeon or if he used the Pony Express. Since the piece conformed to all the other regulations of the NYT’s editorial department, it seems very irresponsible for the Times to reject his rebuttal. Clearly column space is at a premium but we’re not talking about an essay by a minor third party nut job like Nader or a former fringe candidate like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich; we’re talking about a direct response from one presidential candidate to another during the presidential campaign on a crucial campaign issue. For reference, today’s opinion section in the Times contains two articles about Obama’s Europe trip (the bias in this I mentioned earlier).
Of course the Times has the right to publish (or not publish) anything they want as a private entity, but today’s behavior strikes me as utterly devoid of journalist integrity. I’m trying to figure out how the Times is any better than Fox News – maybe it’s because you can’t yell in print like you can on cable TV. The Times not only rejected McCain’s piece, it went so far as to suggest that he “mirror” Obama’s Op-Ed. This is a pretty audacious step in the wrong direction. The reason that newspapers keep editorial staff writers is to provide the paper’s official stance on issues - in their own articles. Suggesting that a contributor of McCain’s stature change his opinion to fit in within the NYT’s worldview is overreaching at best, and at worst, just plain insulting.
I’m not saying that McCain is right here, all I’m saying is that by ignoring it, the Times is wrong. Omission is always more insidious than biased coverage. At least with biased coverage on an issue the reader (or viewer) has a chance to make up their own mind of they agree or not (although this option is not exercised with enough frequency by most consumers). When something is kept left out all together people can’t form their own impressions at all.
Maybe I just held the Times to too high of a standard, but I expected better.
beenthinking:kraabel:PLAN ON WEARING SANDALS
It’s convenient to have my life ambition emblazoned on a t-shirt…
Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.
[via]
i love old license plates. they’re like an ongoing branding campaign for every state. i hold serious contempt for states who poorly consider such influential & far-reaching designs as those found on license plates. nowhere will anyone see more of a state’s marketing efforts than on their plates. furthermore, no other medium allows outsiders to judge an entire state’s citizens’ character on the basis of a poorly-timed U-turn: “oh, that guy’s from idaho. he’s supposed to drive like that.”
Re: New to Tumblr? Here are some topics to get you started.
So Barack Obama and I are in line to see The Dark Knight — me saying how fucking awesome it is to live in New York City, him saying how sad it was that heart-throb Heath Ledger had died. I see somebody else standing in line reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Snuff and I think to myself that the best thing about that book was the graphic design of the cover.
Suddenly I feel a jolt I can’t describe, maybe it was love, maybe it was something else, but can you really describe love anyway, and if so, how, I mean, what is it really, is it a real thing or just some chemicals in our brain, and the following thought crystalizes in my mind:
“Being creative isn’t that difficult, just take some stuff and move it around. Words, colors, notes, anything. Making it interesting to other people is the hard part.”
This seems fairly inspirational to me at the time, so I whip out my trusty Moleskine and record that thought for later, along with some doodles of puppies for the hell of it.
After the movie I went home and surfed around on Muxtape and CollegeHumor until I got bored.
sds:
Here’s a great surf video that reminded me of Sprout. Go ahead and watch this in HD. P.s. Vimeo rocks.The colors in this video are mesmerizing in their beauty.
this video is just way too short.
(note: cross-outs won’t appear if read from dashboard)
July 18, 2008
Tom and I just got back from dinner at Orso’s, which was very nice. The maître d’ forgot to play the Mission Impossible theme through the stereo as he escorted us to our table, but Tom didn’t freak out too much. During dinner, Tom saw Dayton, one of his friends from Church. Dayton made a joke about Brooke Shields and Tom laughed for an hour and forty-seven minutes straight. The food was good. I know Tom especially liked his tiramisu because he did his whole pumping his fists in the air and screaming ‘YES!’ at the top of his lungs thing after each bite.
This afternoon I went to see Dark Knight, and it was definitely as good as everyone’s been saying. It was tough getting a ticket though, not just cause they were selling out, but because I’ve been on CruiseControl (Tom’s way of saying house arrest) ever since he caught me taking a children’s Tylenol when I had a 104 degree fever. I tried explaining it was only a mild painkiller, but he ripped the bottle from my hand and recited his entire speech from A Few Good Men (including Jack Nicholson’s parts).
Anyway…even though the film was great, I know
TomI made the right decision to drop out. There’s no way I could’ve handledTom screaming everyday that he’d show Christian Bale who the real American psycho wasthe stress of the shoot along with raising Suri, or as Tom likes to call her, TomKitten. There will always be offers for other movies, but how many times can a mother see her newborn take her first steps, speak her first words, or get a purification séance by several strange men in hooded cloaks? The answer is not many, since the hydrochloric “cleanse formula” can be harmful upon repeated exposure (the thetan-doctors said the “burns” are just her impurities evaporating into space.)Come to think of it, I’m still not entirely sure how I got pregnant. I remember saying that I thought we should be married before having a child, but Tom seemed really eager to
prove that he’s not gaystart a family. Then I remember having this strange dream where I was lying in a dark room with people chanting (the men in hooded cloaks?) and Tom was cackling while having sex with me. When I woke up, I felt ill and had scratch marks on my body, and a few days later found out I was pregnant. I wonder if this has anything to do with Tom destroying that Rosemary’s Baby DVD we had?I can’t say I didn’t feel nostalgic watching Dark Knight, maybe even a little jealous,
maybe suicidal,but I guess part of being a mother means making sacrifices for yourhusbandchild. Like missing out on the “best superhero film of all-time,” or giving birth with a ball gag strapped firmly to your pharynx, or agreeing that your bedroom ceiling is a great place for a ten-foot mural of L. Ron Hubbard. But whenever Suri does that really cute peek-a-boo thing with her Cabbage Patch Kid, it totally makes me forget about the career and life I’ve left behind…I’m gonna fucking kill myself.
![craytonc:
The Corner on National Review Online
The $125 Billion Binge [Peter Robinson]
“What exactly,” writes John Podhoretz, sweetest of friends and most ruthless of polemicists, “did Bush do to push us down the road to serfdom?” I reply with the following chart.
that’s our money! i suppose the Caesar can do whatever he wants though, right?](http://media.tumblr.com/uFlnyxJUFbny2zm9Ccmphd2L_500.jpg)
The Corner on National Review Online
The $125 Billion Binge [Peter Robinson]
“What exactly,” writes John Podhoretz, sweetest of friends and most ruthless of polemicists, “did Bush do to push us down the road to serfdom?” I reply with the following chart.
that’s our money! i suppose the Caesar can do whatever he wants though, right?
