I had to smile when I read the following this morning on the Newsweek contretemps:
Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief, said Tuesday in an interview on CBS’”The Early Show” that the magazine will “continue to look at how we put together this story, learn from mistakes that we’ve made and make improvements that are appropriate as we go along.”
Asked if anyone involved in preparing the article would lose his job, Klaidman said, “We think that people acted responsibly and professionally and … there was no malice, no institutional bias, just a mistake that was made in good faith.”
Say what? No “institutional bias”? Last I heard Newsweek is written by human beings and I have yet to meet one who isn’t biased in one way or another, myself included most emphatically. Of course, editors (also being human) are biased as well, forming, in the case of a large news magazine, one big agglomeration of bias. But is that “institutional,” you may ask? Well, we’re into the world of semantics here, but I would submit that an organization like Newsweek is in essence one large hive mind – of bias.
What is that bias toward, however? The conventional answer in this case is “liberalism,” but what is that? On the face of it, it is something rather different than the liberalism of JFK and FDR or even the liberalism of Bill Clinton who was willing to take a pro-active stance against the Milosevic dictatorship. No, except in some instances, it is a bias that has ceased to be typically ideological and to be motivated more by issues of power and control. As many of us suspect, if the Iraq War had been Clinton’s (as it could have been under conceivable scenarios), the same parties that are attacking it now, fabricating corrupt news stories and the like, would be cheering it on. That is not ideology. That is sports fandom. But as we have now seen, the sport isn’t tennis or even football. It is gladiatorials to the death.
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57 Comments
1. Charlie (Colorado):No, except in some instances, it is a bias that has ceased to be typically ideological and to be motivated more by issues of power and control. As many of us suspect, if the Iraq War had been Clinton’s (as it could have been under conceivable scenarios), the same parties that are attacking it now, fabricating corrupt news stories and the like, would be cheering it on. That is not ideology. That is sports fandom.
Word.
May 17, 2005 - 8:25 am 2. David Thomson:“We think that people acted responsibly and professionally and … there was no malice, no institutional bias, just a mistake that was made in good faith.”
The roots of this nonsense are epistemological. It revolves around how human beings ascertain truth. How does one distinguish between mere rumor, plausible theory, and established truth? The mediocrities at Newsweek are unable to tell the difference. What is the new journalistic standard to determine the accuracy of information? In the previous thread, Richard McEnroe referred to ìEd Wood’s “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” the movie opens with the then-famous “psychic” Criswell (of “Criswell Predicts,” er, fame) giving a talking-head endorsement of the garbage about to follow, which he concludes by asking, portentously, “Can you prove it DIDN’T happen?”
Thatís it a nutshell: Can you prove it didnít happen? This is indeed the new standard! And I am not trying to be sarcastic. Not even in the slightest. I am dead serious.
May 17, 2005 - 8:40 am 3. flenser:The more that things change…
“Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries. From this capital, the pestilence was diffused into the provinces and cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colors produced two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the foundations of a feeble government. The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious interest, or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families, divided friends and brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to espouse the inclinations of their lovers, or to contradict the wishes of their husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot, and as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared careless of private distress or public calamity. The license, without the freedom, of democracy, was revived at Antioch and Constantinople, and the support of a faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or ecclesiastical honors.”
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/gibbon.html
May 17, 2005 - 8:40 am 4. thibaud:if the Iraq War had been Clinton’s (as it could have been under conceivable scenarios), the same parties that are attacking it now, fabricating corrupt news stories and the like, would be cheering it on
Probably true of those who supported the Kosovo campaign. The logic here is a kind of cheap, bastardized version of the philosophical notion that good effects require good (ie, politically correct) intentions, which implies that Bush, being evil, can never support the right course. Even when he’s merely continuing the Clinton policy of regime change in Iraq, and making good on Clinton’s (unfulfilled) promise. As one of John Lewis Gaddis’s friends told him, being liberated by Clinton’s fine and good, but anyone liberated by Bush would have been better off remaining oppressed.
But consider these other hypothetical cases and ask whether the liberal framework of good vs not good intentions is applied with any kind of coherence or logic:
1) Pat Buchanan and Michael Moore both despise US interventions regardless of the region or cause, be it in Kosovo or Iraq. Each perceives a sinister Zionist-corporate cabal at work in the nation’s capital. Why then do so many liberals lionize one and demonize the other?
What evidence is there that Moore’s and Buchanan’s intentions are fundamentally different? Don’t they both spring from the same angry lumpen-whiteboy isolationism that has characterized midwestern provincialists since the Father Coughlin era?
2) Bernard Kouchner, founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres, and Christopher Hitchens both strongly supported the Kosovo intervention and also supported overthrowing Saddam. Each perceives the overthrow of tyranny and defense of individual rights against vicious butchers to outweigh claims of national sovereignty. Why then do “liberals” applaud the Frenchman and smear Hitchens as a drunken and disreputable apostate?
May 17, 2005 - 8:59 am 5. thibaud:The only logical explanation I can think of is that, ultimately, it’s a matter of style, or more accurately, liberal taste badges. Moore, as gross, vulgar and stupid as he is, nonetheless projects a kind of smirking, Merry Prankster “attitude” that passes for hip. His movies are snarky, occasionally funny. They allow his viewers the supreme satisfaction of considering themselves both morally and intellectually superior to the rubes and right-wingers who, they fear, have hijacked the nation.
Buchanan, far more intelligent than Moore, is far less cool. He exudes midwestern Catholicism; his phraseology, the media he uses, remain stuck in the William F Buckley mode.
As to Kouchner-Good and Hitchens-Wicked, Kouchner prefaces every line of praise for Bush with a ritual denunciation of the “Baptist bigot” and his “simplicisme.” But Hitchens usually begins his pieces by eviscerating the very smugness and pseudo-superiority of his former colleagues. He refuses to indulge his readers the satisfaction of the ritual trashing of Bush that is required of anyone addressing the matter.
This is ultimately the Clinton and Blair legacy: politics as inflection, posing, style. Again, it’s all about being cool. Bush the Texan bible-thumper’s regime change and liberation and democracy-promoting strategies are not and can never be hip.
May 17, 2005 - 9:09 am 6. RBMN:Don’t fire the biased people. That would cripple the whole organization. Just fire those people too stupid to know they were playing with matches, next to a puddle of gasoline. Start there.
May 17, 2005 - 9:10 am 7. Sandy P:OT:
Via LGF:
Gorgeous George is testifying:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Live
May 17, 2005 - 9:14 am 8. chuck:Just fire those people too stupid to know they were playing with matches, next to a puddle of gasoline.
Playing? Ah, that is the question, is it not?
May 17, 2005 - 9:34 am 9. Oyster:“…Clinton and Blair legacy: politics as inflection, posing, style. Again, it’s all about being cool.”
You’re absolutely right. Except, you forgot Kerry’s “nuance”.
It’s, more or less, an order to “kow-tow to my sensibilities or as a messenger, you will be summarily shot”.
May 17, 2005 - 9:41 am 10. Delia True:Why has the political commentary community been so hush hush about this story?
If you care at all, please take a look at my collective letter to all the Assholes in the Bush Administration at:
http://thenewgoo.blogspot.com/2005/05/truth-is-child-of-time.html
May 17, 2005 - 9:54 am 11. chuck:Dear Delia,
Gee, I am glad to see that you have overcome the defects of thought and discovered the truth of feeling. Someone will change your diapers shortly.
May 17, 2005 - 9:59 am 12. Carol_Herman:Bush recently took a swipe at FDR, saying he gave away too much free stuff to the Russians. (While he didn’t notice that Nixon went to China, ya know! Not our best ally during WW2. Just adept at killing Americans to steal the supply lines we needed while fighting in the Pacific.)
But let’s let bygones be bygones.
Meanwhile, Bush has given Afghanistani’s American blood and treasury, in the hopes they’d embrace freedom. And, what do they do? At the first opportunity, they’re burning American flags, and savagely rioting, killing and maiming each other. And, we’re not supposed to notice?
Sure, Newswreck repeated an old story, published a year ago in England; saying Americans were tearing up Arabic pages of the Koran, given to prisoners at Gitmo. (We’re giving those terrorists fancy toilets? Ones that can accommodate pages without getting stuffed up?) NO. It turns out that carnard was spread by the terrorists’ lawyers.
Meanwhile, why not hold the Afghans responsible for this insane savagry? It’s our faults? These same people never did anything to the Taliban, when the Taliban exploded the ancient buddah statues carved into the mountains.
Double standard? Or are they really not on the same page when it comes to discovering freedom? And, what was supposed to be benefits?
ONE PLANE. ONE BOMB. And, a destruction of their poppy fields would have been a much better investment. Those arabs are never going to discover freedom. Why? Well, suddenly they’d have to recognize women and not treat them as family goats. Changes, here, won’t be occurring in our lifetimes!
May 17, 2005 - 9:59 am 13. David:I agree with Roger 100%, if Gore had won in 2000 and he invaded Iraq, we would be reading articles about the “current adminstration” fixing the errors of the Bush administration. Gitmo would be a sad but necessary choice and terrorists would be well terrorists, not insurgents.
May 17, 2005 - 10:22 am 14. Bruce W.:Delia “True”
Your profile describes your occupation as “happy camper”.
Change it.
May 17, 2005 - 11:07 am 15. Charlie (Colorado):Re Delia: I think she’s cute.
May 17, 2005 - 11:25 am 16. chuck:Re Delia: I think she’s cute.
Charlie, Charlie, at our age cute means under thirty. But what would you talk about?
May 17, 2005 - 11:56 am 17. flenser:charlie
She does have a rather charming attack-hamster quality to her. And there is something about a nurses uniform. Or maybe thats just me.
May 17, 2005 - 11:58 am 18. thibaud:Delia comes clean (see her posting Mon May 16, “Why do I continue?”) http://thenewgoo.blogspot.com/
What you donít realize is that I wouldnít have written all this if I werenít hiding behind the keyboard for the majority of my free time. Hereís the truth about the real, living, breathing Delia True. She may be blessed with great friends and a loving family, but ultimately sheís a loner, a boring person with a mediocre social life and too much time on her hands to meditate on topics that she has no intellectual authority to write single word about, let alone three pages of seemingly endless banter. Sheís got a loner routine, but sheís used to it, and has accepted the fact that sheís an independent soul whoís slowly becoming immune to human connection because if Deliaís learned anything from publishing too much of herself, itís that you, dear audience, are too good to be true.
May 17, 2005 - 12:09 pm 19. Silicon valley Jim:Don’t they both [Michael Moore and Pat Buchanan] spring from the same angry lumpen-whiteboy isolationism that has characterized midwestern provincialists
I suppose that Flint, Michigan, is at least arguably midwestern. Pat Buchanan, however, spent the first twenty-two years of his life (and most of the ensuing forty-five years) in Washington, D.C. He’s about as midwestern as Roger.
May 17, 2005 - 12:13 pm 20. thibaud:OK, point taken re Buchanan’s geographical roots. He’s basically an old-time America Firster of the sort who used to argue that Roosevelt betrayed the nation for the benefit of the limeys and reds.
May 17, 2005 - 12:28 pm 21. Charlie (Colorado):Chuck: Charlie, Charlie, at our age cute means under thirty. But what would you talk about?
Talk?
May 17, 2005 - 12:36 pm 22. Charlie (Colorado):Seriously, though, I’ll grant you that Delia appears to be at that difficult age: too young to date, but to old to adopt.
May 17, 2005 - 12:37 pm 23. WichitaBoy:thibaud,
You’re one of my favorite posters, but, speaking of bias, your bias against Midwesterners popped out there. Offense taken. I’m glad SVJim caught it. My experience has been that, on the contrary, most folks on the East Coast are astonishingly provincial. They live in little hamlets that they never leave. Most inhabitants of suburban Boston, for example, seldom go into Boston throughout their lives. Many New Yorkers never leave Manhattan. By contrast, Midwesterners typically travel to some subset of New York, DC, LA, San Francisco, Boston, etc. annually. After all, would you want to be stuck in the Midwest year-round? Most Easterners can’t find the states on a map; most Midwesterners drive to all the states on a regular basis. And, as far as I recall, it was largely the Midwesterners, Westerners, and Southerners during the last election who took the internationalist point of view while the coastal “elites” voted overwhelmingly for the isolationist candidate.
May 17, 2005 - 1:04 pm 24. thibaud:WichitaBoy – mea culpa. FWIW I didn’t mean to tar the Midwest, which is where I spent what that great midwesterner Scott Fitzgerald described as one’s “younger and more vulnerable years.” I definitely agree with your characterizations of each region’s relative cosmopolitanism btw.
What I tried to do, in a clumsy way, was locate a particular political tendency, the traditional Taftite tendency of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, by using a shorthand geographical tag that used to make a lot of sense. And that resonated with my childhood: I grew up not far from where Father Coughlin made his Roosevelt-bashing pro-isolationist radio broadcasts. I’ll dispense with that particular shorthand going forward.
You’re correct: just as “liberals” are the new reactionaries, it’s increasingly the case that the true internationalists who favor a strong and interventionist US foreign policy are more likely to be found in the midwest than on either coast.
May 17, 2005 - 1:28 pm 25. Terrye:Wichita Boy:
I would imagine that it is also midwesterners and southerners who went to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fort Sill is not in Manhattan.
I know the Indiana Guard spent a long time in Afghanistan.
How you gonna keep down on the farm after they seen Kabul.
I had the misfortune to listen to some of Galloway’s ranting and raving and lying out his ass today and I thought, a lot of journalists are much the same kind of people as this asshole.
Not entirely to be sure, but the bias is the same.
They don’t question their assumptions, they revise history, they gloss over unpleasant truths, they invent, create, or manufacture facts, figures and evidence to promote their view in the hopes people won’t notice how completely full of crap they are.
I caught that man in so many lies it was mindnumbing. a million dead? 100,000 dead? billions stolen in oil? Abu Ghraib….Gitmo….if you had only listened to me…..
please answer the question sir and he was off to the races again.
He was too busy spewing venom to answer questions and that is the press.
They are adversarial not informative.
BTW the UN has come out with a death toll that is about 80,000 lower than the Lancet figure George Galloway was throwing around. Notice how neither he or the press has made mention of the new study?
bias.
May 17, 2005 - 1:54 pm 26. Silicon valley Jim:thibaud -
You’re a class act. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
May 17, 2005 - 2:57 pm 27. Hatch:Half-truths,un-truths and outright lies have been printed and disemminated to the public for hundreds,if not thousands,of years.The difference these days is the immediacy of coverage and immensity of the viewing audience.Never before has truthful and accurate reporting been so essential.While we cannot neccesarily expect this from the Al-Jazeeras of the world,we should certainly expect,no.. demand,this from any stateside news?? organizations.We have the power of the citizenry to extract some semblance of justice from situations like this,but its true potential is never realized because of the idealogical bias subliminally imbedded in our media.Half the country thinks the other half are idiots,yet only one side can be right.Am i wrong?
May 17, 2005 - 3:19 pm 28. photoncourier.blogspot.com:‘Don’t they (Moore/Buchanan) both spring from the same angry lumpen-whiteboy isolationism that has characterized midwestern provincialists since the Father Coughlin era?”
I suspect that if you did a detailed personality profile of a lot of today’s “progressives”, you would find a lot of similarity to the more extreme American Firsts and Father Coughlinites. What really scares me is to potential coming-together of the extreme right and the mainstream left. There are an awful lot of issues they agree on (although I think the “issues” are often just a justification for the expression of anger)
Wouldn’t agree with the “midwestern” part, though…there are provincial people all over the place.
May 17, 2005 - 3:58 pm 29. Charlie (Colorado):Wouldn’t agree with the “midwestern” part, though…there are provincial people all over the place.
It’s a new world, I tell you. Can’t even depend on the provincial people to come from the provinces any more.
May 17, 2005 - 4:02 pm 30. Buddy Larsen:Hatch, that reminds me of the old coffee-cup slogan “Everbody’s Crazy Except Me & You–and Sometimes I Ain’t So Sure about You!” And y’all are right, Delia’s cute as a little button. And George Galloway, if high enuff up in the proper sort of government, would make a very serviceable standard-pattern industrial-age murdering dictator.
May 17, 2005 - 4:05 pm 31. Buddy Larsen:You guys are right, no matter where ya go, you’re apt to run into those provincials. Especially foreign countries, where everybody it seems speaks foreign languages.
May 17, 2005 - 4:11 pm 32. thibaud:et tu quomque, SiliconValleyJim. Good to know ya.
May 17, 2005 - 4:12 pm 33. Syl:Hatch…I don’t think we can expect ‘truth’ and no mistakes from anyone, including journalists. What is most important of all is that we have free speech and a democratic society that can debate this stuff almost ad nauseum and hold people accountable for their words.
For anyone out there in the wider world who is paying attention, all this controversy and noise and self-correction is a fantastic lesson in how democracy works.
I must say I am extremely proud of the Iraqis who have figured this out and many of them have! The intelligence and maturity of Iraqis such as Omar who can deal with all sorts of crap in their comments sections makes them far more democratic and tolerant than I.
May 17, 2005 - 5:54 pm 34. richard mcenroe:If they can’t or won’t stop paying the incompetents who wrote, “fact-checked,” “confirmed” and defended this story, then we’ll just have to stop paying all of them. Stop reading Newsweek, and tell its advertisers their presence in those pages is a negative influence on your buying decisions.
Thibaud ó “Buchanan, far more intelligent than Moore, is far less cool. He exudes midwestern Catholicism; his phraseology, the media he uses, remain stuck in the William F Buckley mode.” Excuse me, but Buchanan is a simple thug. I cannot imagine William F. Buckley having his minions assault his rival’s delegates and lock them out of their own political convention, as Buchanan did with his Reform Party run. I cannot even imagine Buckley considering it. The only reason Buchanan has any continuing credibility is because the bourge-lefty talk show producers keep bringing him on as their token, and designated, “conservative.”
May 17, 2005 - 5:57 pm 35. Steve J.:DAVID THOMSON:”Thatís it a nutshell: Can you prove it didnít happen? This is indeed the new standard! “
It’s the Shifty Boat Vet standard.
May 17, 2005 - 9:49 pm 36. Steve J.:TERRYE:”they gloss over unpleasant truths”
Like these?
“We know for a fact there are weapons there.” – Ari Fleischer, Jan. 9, 2003
“But make no mistake — as I said earlier — we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about.” -Ari Fleischer Press Briefing 4/10/03
May 17, 2005 - 9:55 pm 37. Buddy Larsen:Don’t worry too much about the shifty boat vet, Steve–he lost the election, and from the senate he can’t surrender the nation to the enemy.
May 17, 2005 - 10:05 pm 38. gumshoe:turn off the “mother of all smoke machines”.
Andrew McCarthy gets it.
__________________________________________
Andrew C. McCarthy on Newsweek & Koran
on National Review Online
The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations
- Count me out of the Newsweek feeding frenzy.
May 17, 2005, 1:07 p.m.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200505171307.asp
__________________
- Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
May 17, 2005 - 10:30 pm 39. Steve J.:ROGER:” As many of us suspect, if the Iraq War had been Clinton’s (as it could have been under conceivable scenarios), the same parties that are attacking it now, fabricating corrupt news stories and the like, would be cheering it on.”
I DON’T DETECT MUCH CHEERLEADING IN THESE ARTICLES:
ALTHOUGH U.S. and allied warplanes in one sense won the war in Kosovo last spring, President Clinton’s visit yesterday was far from a victory tour. As he acknowledged, Kosovo faces grave problems. The ultimate judgment on U.S. military intervention will depend on how successfully the United States, the United Nations and Kosovars themselves face those problems.
Muted Victory; [FINAL Edition]
The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Nov 24, 1999. pg. A.22
Valentin Krumov had just arrived in Kosovo, one of the legions of U.N. workers come to help rebuild this devastated land. A Bulgarian, Krumov, 38, attracted the attention of a group of ethnic Albanian teenagers as he took an after-dinner walk with two female colleagues along Pristina’s crowded main street Monday evening.
The group of young thugs immediately attacked Krumov, punching him and kicking him to the ground. A shot rang out, the crowd fled and Krumov’s first night in Pristina ended with his murder — on Mother Teresa Street.
Four months after the end of NATO’s air campaign and the withdrawal of Serb-led forces, the borders of hate are expanding in Kosovo. The conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbs is quickly being supplanted by a parallel struggle between forces of tolerance and intolerance within the ethnic Albanian community. So far, intolerance is winning.
Forces of Intolerance Threaten to Consume Kosovo; [FINAL Edition]
Peter Finn. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Oct 13, 1999. pg. A.01
Yugoslav security forces are infiltrating Kosovo to spy on NATO forces and provoke renewed violence, a senior U.N. official said today.
Military officers in the NATO-led peacekeeping force said their troops have been placed on a higher state of alert, particularly in the tense northern Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica, where Serbs and ethnic Albanians clashed 10 days ago.
Several NATO officials expressed much less concern, saying they have no evidence of specific plans by Yugoslav forces to create disturbances in Kosovo, which remains a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. One official involved in monitoring Serbian activities in Kosovo described the intelligence reports as more rumor than fact.
Serbian Agents Said to Be Infiltrating Kosovo; [FINAL Edition]
R. Jeffrey Smith. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Sep 22, 1999. pg. A.27
May 17, 2005 - 10:31 pm 40. Steve J.:“Don’t worry too much about the shifty boat vet, Steve–he lost the election, and from the senate he can’t surrender the nation to the enemy.”
This is simply delusional.
May 17, 2005 - 10:33 pm 41. Buddy Larsen:Steve, 5 & 6 yr-olds these days know how to use Google.
“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force– if necessary– to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
“Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime … He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction … So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real …”
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003
Hundreds–thousands–more here.
Back on the post’s theme, don’t miss the wonderful Claudia Rosett over at the WSJ, damning Newsweek’s navel-gazing with faint praise of what the American media could accomplish.
May 17, 2005 - 10:35 pm 42. Jim Rockford:Notice how Bill Clinton told the Party to Shut up and support the effort to get victory in Iraq? Man knows a thing or two about politics. Dems would do well (but won’t) to heed him. They are intent on pursuing a jihad on this right off the cliff.
Newsweek seems intent on proving Mike Wallace’s assertion that he was a journalist first and American only second. They think the worst of the US and the best of Al Qaeda. Meanwhile Andrew Sullivan and the rest shed crocodile tears over any Muslim at any time anywhere being offended somehow, while praising Piss Christ and Dung Madonna.
Ahem.
May 17, 2005 - 11:03 pm 43. Dave Johnston:Even though it is only tangentially related…has everyone noticed the journalistic nonsense going on over at the Detroit Free Press?
Sure, the situation surrounds Mitch Albom, the sportwriter and sometimes author, but the overall arch of the story is very troubling. Not only did Albom simply invent a story for a column, but now we find out that the DFP has an internal problem with journalists merely lifting quotes from anywhere (TV, other columns, etc.), rewording them, and then playing them off as original?
If you take it out of the context of sports it seems pretty disturbing…
I have more here:
http://newdave.com/index.php?p=259
May 17, 2005 - 11:29 pm 44. Steve J.:JIM ROCKFORD:”Newsweek seems intent on proving Mike Wallace’s assertion that he was a journalist first and American only second. “
If they really were Americans first, Bush would be swinging from the gallows.
May 18, 2005 - 12:37 am 45. Terrye:steve J:
That is one of the most stunningly stupid things you have ever said.
It is Roger’s blog, but I think he should ban you. Wishing death on a president just because you are partisan hack is really smarmy my friend. makes my skin crawl.
You know Saddam Hussein could have ended all this for himself and his regime years ago, if only he had complied. But his “friends” like Galloway encouraged him to defy the UN. Just like the same friends do not accept the elected government of Iraq as legitimate even though the UN certified it. So I guess they are fair weather friends not only to Saddam and the people of Iraq but the UN itself.
So it seems to me that there are a lot of self serving, dictator loving disengenuous folks out there who really should not be on the board here blowing off, they should go to Iraq and tell the victims of the insurgency all about it.
Go ahead. there are a lot of folks over there that would love to tell you how they feel.
coward.
May 18, 2005 - 3:51 am 46. Charlie (Colorado):I can’t quite figure out how to approach it, but I find myself increasingly fascinated with the question of how the trolls get here? SteveJ is sort of a middle-of-the-road case, since he’s willing to exchange slurs, if not to exchange actual thoughts.
Delia, on consideration, looks to have been trolling for traffic, but she did it reasonably honestly, posting a comment in a thread to which it is apposite and which appears to be actually written to fit.
But what about the ones like ‘calculus’ who drop in, cut-and-paste a misquote or out of context quote and are never heard from again?
As Dennis’s Law suggests, this seems to happen when they know they’re in trouble, but — like, is there a Troll Control that sends out the message and a list of blogs to target? Or is it some sort of emergent behavior, like the way cellular slime molds join up?
May 18, 2005 - 7:29 am 47. Roger:Steve J. was banned fromthis site last night for his comment two above this.
May 18, 2005 - 7:48 am 48. chuck:Charlie,
I suspect Roger gets linked in a few places and folks drop by — Instapundit could be the proximate cause. Emergent behaviour sounds like the right point of view to describe what goes on, with all the connections between blogs and other internet sites the opportunity is sure out there. Roger’s blog and his community of commenters are probably another example of emergent behaviour; it would be interesting to go back in the archives and watch how attitudes and tone have developed here over the past two years.
Hmm… do you know if there is a technical definition of emergent behaviour?
May 18, 2005 - 8:14 am 49. thibaud:Richard McEnroe -
You’re right. Buchanan’s one-of-a-kind. In the Mikey Maroon-Pat Pugilist example I was simply trying to show how the “cool” Left is morphing into a type of angry isolationist that was always associated with the tres uncool populist Right.
Give it time: Buchanan will begin appearing on the pages of The Nation in due course, just as his right-populist confrere Kevin Phillips has.
May 18, 2005 - 8:29 am 50. thibaud:Charlie, Chuck – Could you please explain what you mean by “emergent behavior”? thanks, t
May 18, 2005 - 8:30 am 51. Buddy Larsen:Thibaud, what could it mean besides ‘behavior’ that is ‘emerging’? Ah, you pointy-headed intellectuals!
Roger, that’s probably a good ‘ban’ call…there’s just too many nutjobs out there to let yourself in any way contribute even an iota to any desensitization of the idea of regicide (or whatever it’s called in a republic).
I mean, the idea of Pat Buchanan on the cover of The Nation ought to be humorous rather than seemingly coldly inevitable. But the brain-drain out of the philosophical wing of the Demos–evidenced by the rise of such limited leaders as Kerry and Dean–has to going somewhere, doesn’t it?
May 18, 2005 - 9:11 am 52. Charlie (Colorado):Chuck — wow, that’s a good question. Let me dig into my various books and look. … I think Steve Wolfram takes a shot at it in A New Kind of Science, but I’m undecided about whether I buy his general argument. I think it would have to do with phase changes from regimes of high Kolmogarov complexity to regimes with low complexity.
Thibaud, neglecting the technical details for the moment, the basic idea is that there are systems with no central controller that still exhibit what appears to be coherent and organized behavior. Cellular slime molds are one of the canonical examples. They generally behave as single-celled organisms, but under certain conditions they sort of all agree to act like one animal — literally, they start to move, can be trained and differentiate into a reproductive organism with their own reproductive “organs”. Then, afterwards, they go back to doing what they do individually.
Another example is fireflies, which will in some conditions synchronize their flashes.
The basic point is that there is no Master Slime Mold cell, no “brain” that makes the decision; coherent behavior that emerges without a controller.
May 18, 2005 - 9:35 am 53. WichitaBoy:thibaud,
If you’re still out there, the whole idea of emergent behavior is quite fascinating. Consciousness is another classic example. Whereas individual neurons are firing and coordinating in all animals, much as individual slime molds are going about their business, they don’t seem to coordinate into something greater until the human brain comes along. I found Steven Levy’s book Artificial Life to be a good read on this and some related subjects, though it’s probably dated at this point. You also might want to poke around the website of the Santa Fe Institute.
May 18, 2005 - 10:40 am 54. chuck:thibaud,
Charlie and WichitaBoy have already done a good job with this. Other examples would be fish schools and the V pattern of migrating geese. In these cases the individual seems to react to its nearest neighbors according to simple rules, yet a single whole seems to emerge out of it — fish schools will turn as one or open up holes in front of charging predators. The term emergent behaviour is a sharpened version of the old observation that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
May 18, 2005 - 11:29 am 55. Charlie (Colorado):WB: “Whereas individual neurons are firing and coordinating in all animals, much as individual slime molds are going about their business, they don’t seem to coordinate into something greater until the human brain comes along.”
Sez who?
Chuck: “Other examples would be fish schools and the V pattern of migrating geese.”
I think I’d quibble with you on migrating geese, because the pattern is computationally simple and exhibits a single controller (the lead goose tends to be a gander, and it’s often the alpha male in other ways.) But schooling fish and birds that form those big random looking flocks are good examples, so it’s a mere quibble.
I like Steven Johnson’s Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, John Holland’s Emergence: From Chaos to Order and of course Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science are all good sources.
Be careful with Wolfram, though — lift with your legs, or you could hurt yourself.
May 18, 2005 - 12:14 pm 56. Charlie (Colorado):Speaking of animals….
May 18, 2005 - 12:27 pm 57. thibaud:Thanks, fellas. I’ve got my reading for the next mon- er summer.
Quick thought: I see analogies to blogswarms.
Neurons : blogs
brain : new memes developed on, by, with blogs
May 18, 2005 - 2:09 pm