Day: July 8, 2010

here we find yet again exposed the central lie of American establishment journalism: that opinion-free “objectivity” is possible, required, and the governing rule. The exact opposite is true: very strong opinions are not only permitted but required. They just have to be the right opinions: the official, approved ones. Just look at the things that are allowed. The Washington Post lavished editorial praise on the brutal, right-wing tyrant Augusto Pinochet, and that caused no controversy. AP’s Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier got caught sending secret, supportive emails to Karl Rove, and nothing happened. Benjamin Netanyahu formally celebrates the Terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel that killed 91 civilians and nobody is stigmatized for supporting him. Erick Erickson sent around the most rancid and arguably racist tweets, only to thereafter be hired as a CNN contributor. […] Having someone who was part of the slaughter of 80 civilians in Lebanon on your Board is fine. [Having] a former AIPAC official with an obvious bias toward Israel […] is perfectly consistent with a news network’s “credibility.” But expressing sadness over the death of an Islamic cleric beloved by much of the Muslim world is not. Whatever is driving that, it has nothing to do with “objectivity.”

Glenn Greenwald, opining on the inexplicable firing of CNN’s Octavia Nasr. Read the whole thing. Your Liberal Media.

Put Kagan in the Buck

Kagan in 1989: [2 Live Crew’s album, As Nasty As They Wanna Be, banned by a federal judge because of its sexual content, isn’t obscene, because] Nasty does not physically excite anyone who hears it, much less arouse a shameful and morbid sexual response.
Luther Campbell in 2010: She is not going to let any person or group tell her what is right or wrong. Kagan will judge each case based on the law of the land. She has demonstrated she can protect the Constitution by doing the fine work she did to protect 2 Live Crew’s freedom of speech.

Jackass knowledge

bobulate:

Metafilter with well over 500 responses on wrongness:

What in life did it take you a surprisingly long time to realize you’ve been doing wrong all along?

I once cooked expertly with my rangetop stove, when I moved to the city of Kobe, something I frankly knew nothing about. The device was waiting for me in my village apartment when I arrived, so I did to it with food what it seemed wont to do, interpreting its icons as called for. Toast in one area, fish in another, mochi, and so on. I had it all worked out. I spoke of this phenomenon with pride until, abruptly, a Japanese friend pointed out I had juryrigged it beyond recognition. I was doing it all wrong. And badly.

Since 1995 — when it was sort of coined by an episode of This American Life (00:00-04:01) — it’s been fun to call out “Jackass Knowledge.” There’s a point in conversation, a point at which information begins to thin, to stretch, to bend, and you take that shred of information you read online, in the Times, or heard from a friend, and you stretch it beyond where it truly belongs. It often comes in the form of talks we get into on subjects like partially hydrogenated oil, the frontal cortex, sustainable coffee bean suppliers, and the pythagorean theorem. The trouble is when you have a little information, you can go to far. And then, you’re well, you know.

Interesting. One of the quotes that jumped out at me:

That weird Arby’s logo is stylized drawing of a cowboy hat.

I thought it was a fish jumping out of a loaf of bread until I actually went to one and discovered that there was a real dearth of fish on the menu.

I guess if I look hard, squint, and pretend I’ve never seen a cowboy hat and consider various species of whales to be fish, then I get it.

Still don’t see the loaf of bread…maybe the whale done smushed it. The mind is a mysterious place.
Jesus, however, is definitely in the HEB sign.

Jackass knowledge