October 21st, 2008
links for 2008-10-21
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Go Maddow go.
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Really interesting. YouTube grabbing the long tail of festival films.
Archive for October, 2008
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October 21st, 2008
Famous directors do McCain attack ads.
As “imagined” by John Woo, Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson:
October 21st, 2008
Campbell Brown brushes off criticism from the McCain camp.
From Howard Kurtz this morning:
Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain adviser, says that when she was at the Bush White House she “admired” Brown’s approach but now believes the anchor is one-sided. “I find her work at CNN a stunning departure from journalism in the tradition of tough, smart women like Andrea Mitchell, Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric, to something that looks and feels a lot more like commentary in the mold of Keith Olbermann,” Wallace says.
Brown says the campaign has not offered specifics to back up its complaints about her supposed bias. “That as a journalist I dared to ask them to explain what Governor Palin’s foreign policy credentials were? That I dared to ask the campaign to give journalists basic access to their vice presidential candidate? This is why they are lashing out? Give me a break.”
Hear hear.
Update: New people coming to the site for the first time from Duncan’s place should read my first post on Campbell Brown arguing that she’s building a new model of engaged journalism that The New York Times could learn from.
October 20th, 2008
links for 2008-10-20
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This'll be fun.
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They make a pt of saying they're giving it to reporters, NOT sending videographers who make professional style content.
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Impressive.
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So natural I could have swarn it had already happened.
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Makes sense to me.
October 20th, 2008
Evil Eliciting the Challenge of a Conscious Good
As Josh said yesterday, it’s clear that the McCain campaign will finish up the race with a Greatest Hits of their racist McCarthyite campaign. Their bet? The media won’t fight back with enough force to make calling Obama a Muslim socialist terrorist a net negative.
The media sphere proving them wrong would be a victory not just for the Obama campaign, but for society as a whole and the forces of tolerance and rationality broadly. And some people are making an effort.
Louis Hartz wrote in The Liberal Tradition in America of McCarthyism not just as a threat but as an opportunity. He wrote (in 1955):
You can turn the issue of McCarthyism upside down: when as the meaning of civil liberties been more ardently understood than now? A dialectic process is at work, evil eliciting the challenge of a conscious good, so that in difficult moments progress is made. The outcome of the battle between intensified “Americanism” and new enlightenment is still an open question.
It is the same battle we see now.The battle between “intensified ‘Americanism’,” by which Hartz means the kind of rabid nationalism McCain and Palin are now stoking and McCarthy stoked before them, is not a battle between liberals and conservatives. It is instead a battle between demagogues and rationalists, those who would rule through fear and division and those who believe in an enlightened progress.
That’s why Colin Powell’s direct assault on the McCain campaign was so important. Playing his role as statesman, Powell endorsed Obama and highlighted the valour and sacrifice of a Muslim-American soldier, to push back against the forces of “intensified ‘Americanism’.”
So did Campbell Brown last week when she did the same thing by calling bullshit on the same “Muslim” as smear campaign. Brown is insisting that media elites do have a roll in distinguishing between demagoguery and argument regardless of ideology.
WIll there be more Powell’s and Brown’s? Moderate conservatives who will push back against demagogues despite their ideological leanings? Media elites who are willing to take the heat for engaging because they believe rising to the challenge of evil is more important?
That strikes me as the question of the next two weeks.
October 17th, 2008
links for 2008-10-17
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After a big song and dance about backing Olbermann and Matthews down from anchoring big event coverage, they're still anchors in everything but name.
October 16th, 2008
links for 2008-10-16
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MSNBC tops Fox in the prime demo again for the first time since May (which was the first time ever).
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Smaller than the second, bigger than the first.
October 15th, 2008
links for 2008-10-15
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Wow, Obama is taking over the world.
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Weird. Saturday at 10, so not such a big deal. But weird.
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Nothing groundbreaking, but a good quick discussion.
October 15th, 2008
Campbell explains it herself!
You don’t need to listen to me, Campbell Brown herself explains her model: