Thursday, December 28, 2006

New Star Tribune owner's resume: off-shore oil drilling and direct mail

Strib columnist Nick Coleman today has the best analysis I've seen so far of the Star Tribune sale to the Avista Corp., whose major holdings include nothing in newspapers, but plenty in the area of direct mail and off-shore oil drilling:

http://www.startribune.com/357/story/903516.html

I used to work for an Avista-like company that also had no knowledge of the newspaper field, and no interest in learning. It was called Fidelity. And it owned a chain of about 100 weekly newspapers, where I was a lowly cub reporter.

As reporters and editors began to quit, Fidelity decided not to hire any staff to take their place. Instead, under-staffed papers would borrow more and more articles from the neighboring towns. The result was laughable at best, but to longtime readers it was straight out offensive.

Just imagine opening up the "Bloomington Weekly News" and finding only coverage of St. Paul and Edina!

It got to the point where the weekly papers were cobbled together by one reporter and one editor. And then just an editor. And then by no regular staff at all, with the task of laying out articles performed by whomever in the shared newsroom happened to have a hand free.

Of course, from Fidelity's perspective, the staff was completely expendable. After all, it's advertisements that pay the bills. So why not get rid of content entirely and just fill the paper with ads? After all, everyone loves waking up in the morning to a cup of coffee and the weekly supermarket shopper. Am I right?

Of course not.

Suffice it to say, Fidelity eventually got out of the newspaper business. Let's hope Avista is a quicker study.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Supposedly, this is a nice l'il Internet...

I like this site for its local political analysis: http://minnpolitics.blogspot.com

I like this site for its in-depth listing of all the Green Lanterns who have ever patrolled the myriad sectors of the universe, on behalf of the blue Guardians of Oa:
www.glcorps.org

And I like this site because supposedly, it gets me on the Web:
Affordable T1 Service price quotes and Discount T1 lines from cheap T1 providers. Instant Quotes!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The end is nigh

They put Hillary AND Barack Obama on the cover of Newsweek?

The media really is trying to cancel these two out, aren't they? And the Dems will sit back and let them do it, as usual.

And the conservatives will cackle all the way to the White House.

Get ready for John McCain in 2008.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

The Closed Circle

I've heard tell it's called a Closed Circle -- a handful of people surround themselves with only themselves, preaching their brand of the gospel to the converted, until they believe their philosophies are so perfect that no reasonable person could ever think differently.

Without objective input allowed to seep in from the outside world to challenge their core beliefs, at a critical moment, the circle acts on their beliefs, terribly and momentously. And the results ain't pretty.

We see closed circles among psychopaths, the radical right and the radical left, cultists, the Karl Rove White House, and Hollywood stars. (Why else would M. Night Shylaman cast himself as a prophetic author destined to change the world in the otherwise underrated "Lady in the Water"?)

But these days, unfortunately, we mostly see closed circles among mainstream Democrats, who refuse to believe that Populism counts: http://www.flaregun.org/?p=102

John Kerry and Hilary Clinton have formed a closed circle of sorts, both thinking that they are well-regarded throughout the country, have something wonderful and popular to contribute to national discourse, and their time in the Oval Office is nigh.

Not so deep down, I like these people. (I even had a picture of Hilary Clinton on my wall in high school.) I would probably vote for them. Their politics more or less mirror my own.

But wrapped in their northeast thinking and northeast network, they are oblivious to how despised they are on the streets of Middle America. Among bankers and mailmen and hair dressers and garbage workers and bakery shop owners, they just don't come across entirely human.

Instead, they come across like prim New England elites -- snooty, academic and disloyal, and oblivious to the middle class. "Tea time, anyone?"

They've got an image problem bar none.

But there's a larger problem here, and its partywide. While Democrats talk a good policy game, they continuously lose the Battle for Hearts and Minds on the road to the White House. Since Jimmy Carter fell to Ronald Reagan some two decades ago, only one Dem has broken the Curse of the Bambino and snuck into the president's chair. And like it or not, that's Bill Clinton.

How did he do it, when all others failed? The simple answer is by being from the south, and loving it. The more elaborate answer is by looking and acting like he was outside the Dem's Closed Circle.

Clinton, a policy wonk behind closed doors, was in front of the camera something far different: a gregarious, imposing, womanizing, empathetic, tear-spattering Good Old Boy from a Place Called Hope, just when the nation -- and the economy -- could use some southern gospel. He was all heart and body.

And some mind. But he saved most of his mind for when it mattered, and spoke from something that sounded like his great southern heart when it didn't. Not exactly Hillary Clinton's forte. Or John Kerry's.

But don't tell that to the Closed Circle.

Though it wouldn't much matter, anyway, because they wouldn't much listen.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Meditation on man and Superman, and Richard Pryor!

I just watched the one and only "Superman III." You know, the one starring Richard Pryor?

That's right -- Richard Pryor.

Bizarre. Terrible. Hilarious. It's like an acid-trip into Bizarro world, where the production interns get free range to recreate the Superman legacy in their own image because the director is drunk and tired. I dub it "The Slapstick Superman," because it plays for laughs and oddity.

At its strangest, a green Walking Man signal in a stop-light starts a fist-fight with a red Walking Man, and traffic is thrown into a Chaplain-esque back-and-forth motion. The evil industrialist's sister gets transmorgraphied into a bionic woman by rebel computer wires that, as Pryor puts it, "want to be alive." (I paraphrase). And Supes goes from superhero to unshaven mischief maker, blowing out the Olympic Torch and straightening out the Leaning Tower of Piazza.

Worth watching ... if you're impaired.

If I were a movie critic, this is how I would rank them:

Superman I -- The Epic Superman
Every true hero has an origin story, and this epic gets it right. SEE a planet explode, a baby hold a car above his head, a teen outrun a train! HEAR the Oscar-nominated score, Marlon Brando's timeless narration, Margot Kidder's screachy overbearing theatrics. FEEL for the aging farm family that can no longer keep their all-American boy safe in Smallville, and TREMBLE at the sight of ruthless industrialist Lex Luthor, played to perfect pitch by Gene Hackman. Nominated for three Oscars. And robbed of every one of them!

Superman II -- The Brutal S&M Superman.
Superman is one of the few series where the sequel is every bit on par with the original. In this case, we're talking about the original sequel, which came right after the original Superman, follow? It's a dark, action-oriented meditation on love and sex and the year 1980, where Superman tangles with three ruthless outlaws from Krypton. These guys are genuinely scary, and each looks and acts like a reject from an S&M society party. So where have they been hiding since Krypton's demise? In a flat prison universe known as the Negative Zone, a terrifying torture reality which bookends the film (and underscores the S&M theme). SEE Superman give up his powers for love (sex is implied), and then SEE him bleed copiously for it! (See? More S&M!)

Superman III -- The Slapstick Superman / AKA Acid Trip Superman
See above. Richard Pryor plays a bumbling computer whiz who is blackmailed into taking over an orbitting satellite and using its lasers to destroy the Columbian coffee trade. Engineering a scheme to acquire all the world's oil, an evil industrialist slips man-made Kryptonite to our hero, accidentally turning him from a super-do gooder to a super mischief-maker. Superman's unanticipated reaction includes growing a five o'clock shadow, drinking at bars, sleeping with loose women, straightening the leaning Tower of Piazza, and blowing out the Olympic torch. A final fight ensues between the Man of Steel and an unstoppable living computer that Pryor designs on scrap paper and a flattened cigarette box, stashed in his pocket. Kidder is mercifully absent until the movie's final moments, when she notices the hunky diamond on Lana Lang's finger, and gets all bitchy to Clark Kent about it. And no, I'm not making even a drop of this stuff up:
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/movies/movies.php?topic=m-movie3

FUN FACT: Superman's doe-eyed smalltown love interest, struggling single mom Lana Lang, is played by Annette O'Toole, who is now seen regularly on the small screen as Martha Kent, Superman's adopted mom, in the TV show "Smallville." In other words, Superman hits on his mother. And its kind of implied that he scores...

From Supermanhomepage.com, by Wallace Harrington (wwh27539@mindspring.com):
"To me, the character that stole the show was Annette O'Tooles' Lana Lang. Her Lana seemed to validate Superman as Clark Kent. Time after time, Lois would denigrate Clark while regaling Superman, but Lana could see the goodness in both. After viewing this, I came to wish that O'Toole would return in a future Superman movie rather than Margot Kidder. Unfortunately, that was not to happen."


Superman IV -- The Quest for Closure of a Dying Franchise.
Okay, okay, its actually called the "Quest for Peace." A worthless, low-budget rush job that tries to vaguely imitate films that try to capitalize on our vague Cold War fears about nuclear proliferation, which is another big word that you don't know. A single Superman hair is stolen from a museum and used to clone a Nuclear Man, a steroidal flying freak (with a doomed acting career, here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0683565/ ) who shoots electrical bolts from any available body part. He's mute, but constantly crackling with power. Who could be behind this modern menace? Can you say Lex Luthor? Reeve has gone on record saying that when he filmed this quack job, he was pretty much clinically depressed about it. Well, maybe those are my words, not his. But he wasn't happy about it! I swear, I swear! I read it in a magazine when I was like 12 or something! At this barber shop! I was waiting for a haircut, and... Oh, never mind.

Superman II -- The 2006 Gay Pride Hoax
Some Canadian-looking son of a bitch in tights flies around lusting after a manipulative, two-timing Lois Lane (no, not Margot Kidder, but someone equally opportunistic, and equally annoying). This Lois is the ultimate social climber, keeping the men in her life dangling on a string while using their assets to further her career. Her M.O. extends to Superman, who inadvertantly helped her net a Pulitzer for her essay on his worthlessness while he's away from planet Earth finding himself: "Does the world need a Superman?" He comes back, and she's got a son. But is the tot his, or her boyfriend's? Spoiler alert: It's his. To promote this crap, they put the Canadian Superman on the cover of the Advocate, a Gay Pride Magazine, before the film came out. At least, I think they did. It was some kind of gay magazine. Look, there's nothing wrong with that, but this wasn't a particularly Gay film, and Canada boy has since gone on record denying his gayness, probably because he's being shut out of film work. (And I really do think he's Canadian.)

Saturday, December 9, 2006

Is it okay if my second post is an ad for someone else's blog?

I know a ring of academics and lawyers living the good life in New York City, and they've got an anti-war blog that will give you brain burn.

It's good stuff, here: www.againstwot.com

Of course, the views expressed on my friends' blogs are not necessarily the views of this blogger!

But here's a great selection from Nov. 17, after the Saddam Hussein verdict came in, which nicely explains why no one really cared about the trial:

"Naive minds think that the office of kingship lodges in the king himself, in his ermine cloak and his crown, in his flesh and bones. As a matter of fact, the office of kingship is an interrelation between people. The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out man with a flabby lower lip. He who was once called Alfonso XIII could discourse upon this from fresh impressions."

"So wrote Leon Trotsky about the Spanish king displaced by the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. And one Saddam Hussein, now languishing in an Iraqi jail awaiting execution, might add some further insight..."


Their description:

The blog is called ‘Against the War on Terror’. The aim of the blog is to challenge what we see as a political consensus around the notion that the central purpose of government is to reduce threats to our security, no matter how small the risk, and at the expense of liberty.

We argue that the first principleof our society should be liberty, not security, and that the central problem with the war on terror is nothow it is conducted, but that it is being fought inthe first place. We wish to show that the war onterror is not reducible to the peculiarities of theBush administration, but also that much of the criticism of Bush fails to establish a real alternative to the pragmatism and security-based politics that dominates our society.

A truly critical, alternative position must be based on the independent principle of liberty. The blog can be found at www.againstwot.com.

The blog will have a daily post, as well as a Friday Special ofsomewhat longer length than normal posts. A brief statement of our aims and principles is available onthe blog, but it is through the posts themselves thatwe will develop our analysis and arguments. In addition to the blog, we will hold a series of events, beginning with a teach-in on February 25. Theteach-in will be a daylong event covering various specific issues in the war on terror like foreign intervention, civil liberties, political Islam, the problem with human rights, and the place of fear in American politics.

More information will soon beavailable on the blog. For now, I hope that you will visit the blogregularly, send your comments, and spread the word.

Friday, December 8, 2006

A former Coleen Rowley staffer tells all, but digs at the media too much.

A few weeks ago, FBI legal ethicist and anti-war crusader Coleen Rowley got thumped in her Congressional bid by a pro-war, pro-Bush neo-con -- U.S. Rep. John Kline, a career U.S. Marine.


And this, in Minnesota, a (mostly) Blue-ish State that in the same election voted the first black Muslim into Congress and Democrat Amy Klobuchar into the U.S. Senate!

Now, one of Rowley's right-hand volunteers dishes the dirt about what life was like at the helm of Rowley's sinking campaign ship:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_061204_the_day_the_coleen_r.htm

So what happened?

Well, lots of stuff.

Georgianne Nienebar writes eloquently about the frustration of working for a candidate so morally rigid, she apparently refused to ask for big money or launch self-defense / attack ads, even while the competition was aiming for Rowley's knees and jugular.

But she also cries sour grapes, blaming the press for "abdicating" its responsibilities by not doing the candidate's work for her and saving Rowley from the ogre's mouth. Since when was it the media's role to pick sides?

A selection from Nienebar's prose:

"How did we get here? We were flunking. ... There are five possible factors: the ideology of the electorate, the conduct of the Kline campaign, the conduct of the Rowley campaign, the inattention of the press and its abdication of its responsibilities as the Jeffersonian 'fourth estate' and the indifference of the DCCC under the leadership of Rahm Emanuel."

Well, yes and no.

CANDIDATES VS. POLITICIANS
Rather than mostly point her finger at her well-meaning candidate's weaknesses and campaign foibles, Nienebar's main argument seems to be that the opposition fought dirty and money talks. And yes, those are messages that are hard to deny.

But Rowley's flaws as a candidate and the oddities of her supporters played no small part in what even the liberal City Pages -- the Minnesota equivalent of the Village Voice -- dubbed "an inept campaign": http://citypages.com/databank/27/1354/article14882.asp

It's too bad. Rowley might have made a darn good politician. Her writings on her Web site alone are well worth the read. But by her own admission, she was not a strong candidate. And yes, there is a difference -- the difference between the policymaker and the vote-getter.

Who slipped a mickey to Rowley's debate coach, if she ever had one? Why save her best endorsements from Wesley Clark and the relatives of famed Sept. 11 heroes for last? Why didn't she obtain more money, sooner, to go on the television attack? And why were her last-minute television spots rambling attacks on Bush, that never mentioned Kline?: http://www.coleenrowley.com/Video_Pages/rowley_conversion_wm.html

Rather than accept the truth, Nienebar mistakenly rails at City Pages' "unchallenged, un-researched slam" and other supposed media failures.

Not even Rowley quite agrees. Wrote Rowley, in an online post responding to Nienebar's piece:

"I don't blame the media for my loss quite as much as Georgianne, my campaign volunteer, does. But it was unfortunately true that my GOP opponent was allowed to fly below the media radar and that he ducked most public debate in favor of launching his expensive negative attack ads."

...More on that in a moment.

NO BIG MONEY FROM PAPA DONKEY
But it's Nienebar's anger with the Democratic Party's national leaders that is probably the most eyebrow-raising part of her piece -- and the most relevant.

She explains that as the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- the Democrat's fundraising arm -- Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel could have opened the spigot and fed the Rowley camp some badly needed dollars. Instead, after a summer spent warring with Howard Dean over the party's national strategy, the pitbull investment banker decided to fund only yes-men candidates that kissed the party ring.

In other words, candidates whom Emanuel thought could win.

This, according to Fortune Magazine: http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/17/magazines/fortune/politics.fortune/index.htm

And to her credit, rambling Rowley -- quirky, chaotic, hyperactive and unfiltered -- wouldn't know where to begin being a yes-man.

NASTY ADS
That left Rowley with no where to hide and no strong way to fight back when Kline blanketed his district with mailers, and a last-minute slew of negative TV ads got her in the rope-a-dope. Anyone who saw Kline's television spots during the last pre-election weekend got an eyeful. His campaign assailed her for supposedly betraying the troops, belitting soldiers, wanting to reinstate the draft, and morphing his image on her Web site into that of a Nazi.

The Kline camp barely stopped short of accusing Rowley of treason. And his message worked.

Of course, none of Kline's accusations were entirely accurate, and some may not have had any shred of truth to them at all. For instance, the "Nazi" image was actually that of the bumbling Colonel Klink -- who was never explicitly identified as a Nazi on 'Hogan's Heroes' -- and according to Rowley, the unfortunate makeover was not placed on her Web site by Rowley herself, as the Kline camp claimed, but by an overeager campaign volunteer, and then quickly removed.

MEDIA MAYHEM?
No matter. The damage was done. Should the media have gone out of its way during the last campaign weekend to help her recover?

Hardly. Once a campaign has stooped so low as to paste ridiculous pictures on its Web site, it was Rowley's responsibility to distance herself from such antics, discipline the wrong-doer, and take public steps to make sure such goofiness was never associated with her again.

When the shoe was on the other foot and his staffer got caught shouting racial obscenities, Kline did it:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:y3emS0gKim4J:www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/15568082.htm+%22John+Kline%22+AND+Meggen+Lindsay&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Instead, Rowley appeared slow and hesistant to do any of those things, at least in public.

In fact, she sometimes seemed willing to capitalize on such hair-brained lunacy, but lamely, as if unsure whether it would work. The day after a small group of Rowley supporters and anti-war protestors were locked out of Kline's Burnsville office after attempting to barge in with a video camera, Rowley released a vague press release accusing the Kline camp of closing its door to constituents.

That's plain weird. And if her camp was fighting weird, she had to accept some fireballs from the Kline crew in return.

SLEEPING BEAUTY?
But in Nienebar's view, Rowley was a sleeping Snow White, almost too ethical for this world, but waiting in vain to be rescued by a handsome Prince Charming from the below-the-belt antics of the ogre-like Kline. And in this campaign fairy tale, the Prince Charming who "abdicated" his throne and his responsibility and let Rowley down was none other than the press.

By way of proof, Nienebar offers that Rowley failed to win the Pioneer Press endorsement, which was apparently authored by one of the PPress' conservative freelance columnists. Sorry, but the PPress has always been known as the more conservative of the metro area's two daily papers. That kind of treatment is to be expected. And Rowley did capture the editorial support of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and an endorsement from a large chain of suburban weeklies.

One Kline endorsement alone did not doom Rowley. And neither did the printed press.

And neither did the PPress. Rowley received at least mildly favorable coverage from the more conservative paper, here:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:U3FskPIYDfMJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15897387.htm+%22Frederick+Melo%22+AND+rowley&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

And here: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:lWGJH5h0Z_kJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/politics/15756760.htm+%22Frederick+Melo%22+AND+rowley&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

Meanwhile, Kline picked up some negative PPress coverage, here, and in the story mentioned earlier about the staffer's racist comments:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:2a-2_0mTdPQJ:www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/15656682.htm+%22John+Kline%22+AND+Frederick+Melo&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

So why did Rowley lose?

Maybe because it was a conservative district. Maybe because people knew of her, but not enough voters really knew her. And maybe her lack of television ads, her rambling and independent style, and her weak on-the-spot debating skills just doomed her from the start.