Tag: Blithe Spirit

It’s the spirit that moves you

NYT politics writer Matt Bai has a point I brought up about Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s describing the Obama campaign in movement terms.  It has to do with O’s huge crowds, including older folks who had no chance to ask qq in a recent New H. appearance, and his reliance on the under-40 vote.  However persuasive the argument, and Bai is blessedly tentative about this (which you are allowed to be in a blog, where this appears), he says Obama

does seem to be entering a perilous moment where his well-funded campaign could easily become this year’s “cause” or “movement,” rather than a candidacy with the kind of broad support you need to get you through to the convention. Liberal causes built on beautiful speeches and campus rallies never really win the nomination; they just fade into noble lore, fondly remembered by that breed of Democrat who seems to view losing as a kind of moral validation.

 

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Mack the knife coming to town?

“Who is the real Dean Singleton?” asked The Columbia Journalism Review in 2003 about the man named by Crain’s Chicago Business as top dog on a company heard as possible buyer of the Sun-Times.

Is he a mass murderer of newspapers, or is he a man whose hardheaded pragmatism has enabled him, in a difficult period for the industry, to preserve many more newspaper jobs than he has eliminated?

S-T business editor Dan Miller is not waiting to find out.  He resigned today “before he becomes a casualty of pending staff cuts,” reported Crain’s.

Singleton’s Media News Group is not interested in buying S-T, they told Crain’s.

Among those nailing Singleton for the Columbia review article was former Chi Trib editor James Squires, who called him a “bone-picker publisher . . . who can wring blood from a turnip.”

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Newspapers might ponder this

This guy is on to something, or three things, that shed some light on the Great Newspaper Conundrum of our day, especially in Chicago, where the Sun-Times seems to be in dire straits:

The way I see it, newspapers, for now, are positioned to provide three things that are at a high premium and that most blogs/bloggers can’t deliver. I think most would be wise to capitalize on these by shifting the state of mind from being a newspaper to becoming a news organization/outlet/center:

If you want to know the three things, look here.

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Jesse Jr. on Obama as black leader

Congr. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D) on Don & Roma this morning (WLS-AM) presents the Obama campaign as engine of black empowerment, citing 400,000 unregistered black voters in S. Carolina and another 400G+ in Florida and counting on black identification with O.  SC, “historically red,” will become blue, he expects, benefiting Dems in process of arousing (coralling) black electorate.  Having his father’s worldview a la 60s activism, he sees this as a movement, even when it’s politics.

He’s still his father’s son in another respect, mangling the language with such solecisms as being careful not to enter “delicate waters” and noting the impulse to “lob Howitzers” at one’s political opponent.  He’s had top-drawer exclusive Eastern prep school education but still uses words as ideograms or Rorschach blots, sounding genteely ignorant as he does it.

Those delicate waters recall the ladies repairing to Bath for bodily restoration in the 19th century.  As for lobbing a Howitzer, that’s Incredible Hulk stuff.  Can’t be done.

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Holy mother the fedl govt., come to our aid

Newsbusters hits Sun-Times hard today, in its editorial spread vs. GW as leaving children behind.  In the process NewsB. shoots down the whole idea of feds running education productively:

The oldest trick in the book in the “news” biz is to take a photo of a politician that makes him look worried, sad, or downcast to offset a story of how things aren’t working so well for that pol’s policies or plans. Well, the Chicago Sun-Times has used that ages old trick to lambast president Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program by giving us the stories of several Illinois students that supposedly slipped through the cracks of the Federal program and using a picture of Bush with furrowed brow with inset pictures of the several students. Of course, their stories are expectedly filled with nonsense, but it is the photo that the Sun-Times really expects to tell the tale. This photo says “failure and he knows it” all over the thing and sets the tone of bias from the start.

The editorial leans heavily on anecdotal argument, a newspaper staple.  Which is why I often discount newspaper arguments.

As for the law itself, the dreadful situation

won’t improve, many in Chicago’s trenches say, unless the law is changed to address what stands in the way: inequitable funding, overcrowding, violence, truancy and the overwhelming effects of poverty.

If only the federal govt. would “address” funding, violence, truancy, etc.  And if it would, then what?

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Being there is what counts

Among “highs” discovered in last night’s debate by Stephen Green was one for

Obama, for looking and sounding presidential. He still hasn’t said much, but more and more Obama knows how to make you feel comfortable with the idea of him as President. He’s fully developed that something that we call “presidential.” It’s not much of a high, but it was all he needed to prove himself tonight’s winner on the Democratic side.

He’s this year’s Chance the Gardener, a David Axelrod presentation.  Peter Sellers never looked so good.

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Behold this Christian, he loves government

Longtime conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie considers Huckabee’s Iowa win “bad news” for Republicans:

“Mike Huckabee is a Christian socialist. He is a good man, but with a Big Government heart,” Viguerie said in a news release late Thursday night. “He is the most liberal of all the Republican presidential candidates on economic issues.”

Viguerie said Huckabee is inclined to solve any problem by passing laws or launching another government program. “If you like President George W. Bush, you’ll love Mike Huckabee,” Viguerie said. “Conservatives in New Hampshire and the other early primary states had better wake up, and make certain the Huckabee victory is confined to the subsidized ethanol fields of Iowa.”

Well, if he finds as many right-wing Christians in New Hampshire, which we hear he won’t, it’s to worry.  Otherwise, not.

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It’s marriage, stupid

In a column remarkably welcoming to Huckabee, David Brooks talks divorce as economic trouble, even devastation:

Democrats talk about wages. But real middle-class families have more to fear economically from divorce than from a free trade pact. A person’s lifetime prospects will be threatened more by single parenting than by outsourcing. Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.

“More by single parenting than by outsourcing.”  Family values here.

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We like to think the worst?

This is a rather good concise rundown on how things are not as bad as they seem:

Only 36 percent of us approve of our president, and fewer still (18 percent) approve of our Congress. We say our confidence has been shattered, and three out of four think our country is “on the wrong track.” So we tell pollsters, as we slink into the new year.

Surprise: The economy added more than 1 million new jobs last year. It grew at an annual rate of between 3 percent and 4 percent. Share prices rose by over 5 percent, with tech shares up by double digits, these gains being recorded in weeks in which the financial markets are said to be in turmoil.

Exports soared, bringing down the long-standing trade deficit. In November, supposedly traumatized consumers splurged, increasing spending by the largest amount in 3½ years. Final figures for Christmas are not yet in, but my guess is that early pessimistic estimates will prove wrong.

Meanwhile, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin point out in Commentary that crime is way down; teenage drug use, pregnancies, smoking and drinking are all on the decline; welfare reform is working, bringing down child poverty; and the divorce rate is falling.

There’s more.  In my opinion, we are victims of mass-media doomsaying.

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