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The Kicker

  1. November 20, 2009 04:43 PM

    Greg Craig and Transparency

    Time’s Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf have a months long tick-tock chronicling the steps and missteps of soon-to-be-former White House Counsel Greg Craig. There’s too much good stuff in there to bother with a block quote.

    In essence, the article lays out how Craig, who thought that both the rule of law and Obama’s campaign rhetoric pointed in favor of disclosure, won an internal argument to release the so-called “torture memos,” only to be outmaneuvered weeks later by members of the administration’s national security team. Take a look.

  2. November 20, 2009 02:12 PM

    Well, It May Deserve an Award in Something

    Memo to Sean Hannity, who is calling for James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart to get a “journalism award” for their video sting of ACORN: Generally, when in possession of what one believes to be newsworthy information, the journalistic thing to do is get it out to the public—not attempt to blackmail the attorney general.

    In an exchange that begins around the 4:30 mark, Breitbart says:

    Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time.

    Italics are original to the transcript at Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, where the post featuring this clip bears the headline, “Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Just Before 2010 Election.”

  3. November 20, 2009 09:37 AM

    Now a Little Bit Less Excluded

    Today’s New York Times features a front-page news analysis by Kevin Sack about the controversy sparked by the new cancer screening guidelines. The article closes with this graf:

    “It’s going to take time, there’s no doubt about it,” said Louise B. Russell, a research professor at the Rutgers University Institute of Health who has studied whether prevention necessarily saves money (and found it does not always do so). “It’s going to take time in part because too many people in this country have had a health insurer say no, and it’s not for a good reason. So they’re not used to having a group come out and say we ought to do less, and it’s because it’s best for you.”

    Always good to see one of CJR’s “Excluded Voices” getting some media attention.

  4. November 19, 2009 02:24 PM

    Thoughts on the Gelman/Silver Op-Ed

    As anyone who’s read my writing can probably tell, I think political journalism should pay more attention to what political scientists have to say. So I was heartened to see that today’s New York Times includes an op-ed co-authored by Andrew Gelman, the Columbia statistician and political scientist, along with Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com and Columbia research associate Daniel Lee. And they make a good case for their argument, which is that:

    when it comes to politics, “ObamaCare” could hardly be more apt: lawmakers’ support for or opposition to reform generally has less to do with the views of their constituents and more to do with the issue of presidential popularity.

    In other words, one factor influencing senators’ thinking will be (rightly or wrongly) Barack Obama’s popularity in their home state. In particular, Obama’s ratings will be more important than local opinion about health care itself:

    But in general, senators seems to be less interested in what their constituents, old and young, rich and poor, might think about health care, and more interested in how they feel about President Obama.

    Interesting stuff. But, while we’re weighing which stripe of public opinion matters more, it’s worth noting that the public's views--on any topic--are not the only thing shaping Congress’s approach to policy.

    Consider, for example, the several instances in which two senators hail from the same party and the same state (and thus are dealing with the same public), but have staked out different positions on health care. In Virginia, Jim Webb is counted by the authors among the “49 Democrats who fully support the bill,” while Mark Warner “supports with reservations.” The same is true in Montana, where Max Baucus’s reservations are not shared by Jon Tester, and North Dakota, where Byron Dorgan is more bullish than Kent Conrad. (Delaware, where the fully-supportive Ted Kaufman is a stand-in for his long-time boss Joe Biden, and Connecticut, where Joe Lieberman caucuses with Democrats but is an independent, seem like special cases.) On the other side of the partisan aisle, of Maine’s two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe has offered signs of support for reform, while Sue Collins seems staunchly opposed (she is counted by the authors as “opposes in practice”).

    The variation suggests that there’s more shaping senators’ thinking—and their likely votes—than sensitivity to public opinion. This is a point that Gelman himself recently made at The Monkey Cage:

    Congressmembers and Senators can pretty much vote how they want on most issues, whatever their constituents happen to believe. Not always, of course, but a representative can take a much more liberal or conservative line than the voters in his or her district or state, and still do fine when election time comes.

    I asked Gelman about this today via email, and he replied that “a combination of partisan considerations, and the influence of interest groups, and their own considered opinions on the issue" all influence senators' thinking. Of the op-ed, he said, “Certainly we didn't mean to imply that Obama's popularity in the state was the only factor. The real point is that senators are not really directly responding to their constituents' views on health care, or at least it doesn't look that way based on our data.”

  5. November 19, 2009 01:06 PM

    The Luxury Store Has No Clothes

    Today's "quirky" front-page story in the New York Times - there's always one - is a Styles section type piece, perhaps worthy of the Business section, with the headline, "Luxury Stores Trim Inventory and Discounts." But the story gets a lot more interesting inside the jump, thanks to an unfortunately placed Saks Fifth Avenue ad.

    As the Times reports, luxury retailers slashed prices in order to move merchandise in last year's tough market but that upset the fancy fashion designers whose names were on the labels. This year, recession-squeezed luxury stores are using a new strategy to get holiday shoppers to buy things they don't need — carry less of them! The logic goes that deliberately running low on merchandise creates a shopping frenzy that allows retailers to keep items at full price - and sell out - maintaining that luxurious whiff of exclusivity without the icky scent of sales, discounts, or worse - clearance. The Times writes:

    Saks, the chic Manhattan department store, is a prime example. Its inventory is down by double digits compared with last year. That is partly a response to lower demand, of course, but it is also a business strategy aimed at weaning consumers from deep discounts. By carrying fewer goods and selling them at full price, Saks is essentially telling customers: buy it now or live without it.

    Saks, we're told, is all sold out of this season's $2,520 Marni shearling vest. All but one of the 21 cashmere and fox fur-collared Brunello Cucinelli jackets ($2,695) that Saks ordered are gone. And there's only one $5,295 Brioni leather bomber jacket left, as well as just one pair of $1,995 over-the-knee Christian Louboutin boots - in a size 11. None of them have gone on sale and they're not going to any time soon.

    Which is why, when you flip to the jump page on A4, the juxtaposition of the headline, "Luxury Stores Trim Inventory Along with Discounts", with a full-page Saks Fifth Avenue ad on the facing page is just a tad ironic.

    "30% to 50% off a selection of furs now through Tuesday, Dec. 1," the ad trumpets. And not only that - they're practically allowing shoppers to finance their fur coat purchases with the retail equivalent of a NINJA loan, "Enjoy no interest and no payments for 12 months when you spend $2,000 or more on a major purchase account, all on one day."

    How is Saks supposed to re-train its customers with a mixed message like that? Apparently the cognitive dissonance wasn't too much for Saks customers to grapple with though; I checked with a friendly customer service agent at Saks named Lydia G. - those size 11 Christian Louboutin boots were sold - they're now only available online.

  6. November 19, 2009 12:25 PM

    Sully-ing the Brand

    If you felt, yesterday evening, a faint feeling of emptiness...a vague notion of despair...a more-pronounced-than-usual sense of ennui: it was probably because, for a sad span of nine hours last night, The Daily Dish...went dark.

    Yes, we know. It was a difficult time for us all.

    But! After the darkness: light! Our Dish deprivation has come to its conclusion. Sully Et Al are back.

    So...with what update did the blog mark its triumphant return from "only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent"?

    Uh, this:

  7. November 19, 2009 11:22 AM

    The Breast Brouhaha, Continued

    To piggyback on Greg's note about today's Gail Collins op-ed on the mammogram controversy...I have to say, I found it to be one of the most powerful columns she's written to date:

    I am going out on a limb to say that the real problem with a test that creates a lot of false-positive results is that it leads to a lot of other medical procedures, some involving hospitals. Unless you are genuinely sick, there is no more dangerous place to be hanging around than a hospital.

    I had breast cancer back in 2000, and I am trying to come up with a way that I can use that experience to shed some light on these new findings. I have never believed that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel very strongly that everything happens so that it can be turned into a column.

    Whatever the moral would be, I don’t think it helps Representative Camp’s argument. I had mammograms every year like clockwork, and I had just gotten a clean bill of health from my latest one when I found a lump on my left breast while watching a rerun of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” multitasker that I am.

    It turned out to be cancer, of a fairly low-grade variety. My oncologist felt strongly that it never would have developed if I hadn’t taken estrogen replacement therapy — another one of the medical marvels that has now been consigned to the Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time category.

    So, in summary, the cutting-edge of medical thinking of the 1990s may have induced my cancer, and then the universally recommended testing protocol failed to detect it.

    Columns are meant, ostensibly, to be a function of both the individuality of the columnists--their experience, their voice--and the commonality of the subjects they write about. In that regard, Collins's treatment of her experience with cancer, and the universal lessons therein, is both moving and masterful. Its simple, matter-of-fact sensibility--leavened with a bit of Collinsian wit--suggests resilience itself. As does the fact that the column isn't really about Collins's cancer; it treats her illness as merely a subsidiary event in the broader scope of the column's story. Collins buries her lede to powerful effect.

    The op-ed is strongly reminiscent, in fact, of a similar work by another celebrated Strong Lady Columnist: Molly Ivins. Which is a high achievement indeed.

  8. November 19, 2009 11:05 AM

    Kudos to Times on Chamber Membership

    The lead story in today’s special “Business of Green” section in The New York Times is about the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce’s stance on climate change. Reporter John M. Broder notes that some high-profile members have left the group over the issue. And just how big is the Chamber’s membership? Here’s Broder:

    The chamber represents its generally conservative membership of 300,000 companies and local business groups on these issues without much public protest.

    As CJR has explained, the Chamber’s membership structure is somewhat complex. The national group has roughly 300,000 members. But that list includes local chambers; add in the members of those groups, and the national chamber sits atop a “federation” that numbers about three million.

    The Chamber likes to use the larger figure, and “three million” has crept into a lot of reporting on the group, sometimes portrayed without qualification as its “membership.” But as the Chamber itself acknowledges, that portrayal is inaccurate. The simplest, clearest thing for journalists to do is stick with the lower figure—as the Times did here.

  9. November 19, 2009 10:24 AM

    Collins Outlines the Columnist’s Credo

    Gail Collins owns up to a writer's truth today:

    I have never believed that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel very strongly that everything happens so that it can be turned into a column.

    The rest--which has to do with the current mammogram controversy--is here.

  10. November 19, 2009 10:18 AM

    Senate Judiciary Considers Shield Bill, Live!

    Click the play button below to see my live tweets as the Senate considers the Free Flow of Information Act. You can stream the hearing live at the Senate Judiciary site.

    The hearing has ended, but you can still read the once-live tweets from me and the Society of Professional Journalists below.

  11. November 18, 2009 10:35 AM

    Win the Shirt Off Madoff’s Back!

    Add that headline to the list of best/worst newspaper contests to go down in history. The New York Post is promoting a contest to win one of three polo shirts embroidered with the logo of Bernie Madoff's 55-foot yacht, "Bull." The Post purchased the shirts at an auction of Madoff's assets for $1,300.

    The contest promo reads,"If Bernie Madoff stole your shirt, here's a chance to get one of his . . . Don't worry — Madoff's grunge won't rub off on you. Just like his victims, the shirts have been taken to the cleaners."

    Of course, there's a catch. Like all newspaper contests, this one is aimed at selling more papers and boosting circulation. In order to enter, readers must purchase the Post at least three times this week, find a printed coin "token" featuring Madoff's profile hidden each day in the Post's pages, and then affix three of the Madoff tokens to the official mail-in entry form.

    Tricking people into reading the Post isn't quite a swindle on the Madoff level, but it's a clever little bit of gimmickry in the constant circulation battle with rival Daily News that would do the turn-of-the-century Hearst and Pulitzer newspaper wars proud.

  12. November 17, 2009 02:21 PM

    Brooks vs. Brooks on ‘Fiscal Puritanism’

    David Brooks, in his column today, writes: “The standard thing these days is for Americans to scold each other for our profligacy, to urge fiscal Puritanism. But it’s not clear Americans have ever really been self-disciplined.”

    That sort of phrasing suggests that there’s something wrong with “the standard thing.” Which is a bit odd, because over the past year or so one of the most prominent proponents of a return to America’s forsaken “fiscal Puritanism” has been… David Brooks.

    Google “David Brooks debt,” and the first thing you’ll find is his column of June 11, 2008 (all dates from the print edition):

    The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence…

    The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.

    Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded.

    Next up is his column of July 23, 2008:

    America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded…

    And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them.)

    And then there’s his entry from September 29 of this year:

    The Protestant establishment had many failings, but it was not decadent. The old WASPs were notoriously cheap, sent their children to Spartan boarding schools, and insisted on financial sobriety.

    Over the past few years, however, there clearly has been an erosion in the country’s financial values…

    A crusade for economic self-restraint would have to rearrange the current alliances and embrace policies like energy taxes and spending cuts that are now deemed politically impossible. But this sort of moral revival is what the country actually needs.

    If the meme Brooks identifies today is the "standard thing," it's in part because he has helped make it so.

  13. November 17, 2009 02:04 PM

    CJR on The Radio

    This morning, I was a guest on The Exchange, a New Hampshire Public Radio talk show. Up for discussion was the contemporary legal landscape as the First Amendment and shield laws meet the internet age.

    The Granite State has been hosting one such clash, as CJR noted in April, after a mortgage company based there sued a blogger to determine who leaked an internal memo to his site. (In a bit of a surprise, the lawyer who argued for the blogger before the state's supreme court earlier this month called in to explain their case.)

    Sheldon Toplitt, a lawyer and media law instructor at Boston University who keeps the entertainingly named The Unruly of Law blog, was also a guest, and he did a great job describing many recent and oft-contradictory state court rulings grappling with how to apply old law to new media.

    You can stream the proceedings over at the NHPR website.

  14. November 17, 2009 12:18 PM

    The Blade’s Last Cut

    Via @jackshafer, I came across this moving, photo-heavy blog post from the Washington City Paper recording the sudden and unexpected death of the Washington Blade, one of the most prominent and valued publications in the gay press, at the hands of their corporate owners, Window Media. One optimistic take away: it seems that some of the paper’s staffers are banding together and plan to launch some new publication, details TK.

    But amidst the depression, I loved this gritty scene:

    Reporters have been calling the office all morning in search of a comment, having only heard confirmation of the paper’s closure via Tweet. Finally, Editor-In-Chief Kevin Naff comes outside to make a statement. Hold on—he has to pee. When he returns from the bathroom, he addresses reporters in front of the Blade’s glass-enclosed offices. Inside, a couple of Window Media staffers can be seen shuffling around a glass conference room, hard at work dismantling the newspaper. One of them wears an eye-patch. “I can’t speak on behalf of the company, and I can’t speak here,” Naff says. So the group heads around the corner, where Naff stands in front of another large window looking in on Window brass. “You can refer to me as the former editor of the Blade,” Naff says.

    Very nicely told.