GONZO

The departure of Alan Colmes

2008-11-22T23:30:00.000-08:00

As HuffPo reported this morning, Alan Colmes will be leaving Fox News' top-rated "news show" Hannity and Colmes after 12 years on air. I put that in quotes for a reason - the premise of the show has been that Hannity is conservative while Colmes is liberal, further emphasizing Fox's "fair and balanced" mantra. While the sparring of pundits is no doubt commonplace, what worries me is how interchangeable it has become with the world of television news journalism.

More than that, over the course of the past 12 years, Fox News has become increasingly more conservative and increasingly less fair and balanced. There is no denying its right wing bias. So what now? Will they find another (insert gasp) liberal to exchange barbs with Sean Hannity? And frankly, what's the point? Did Colmes ever really convince Fox's audience of anything or was he merely a liberal punching bag?

My previous post on Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly's most recent meeting touched on the same idea - the value of opposite ends of the spectrum meeting to try and understand eachother's points of view, their motives, their fears. What I appreciated about Stewart was that it seemed like, even if albeit momentarily, he had a vested interest in understanding WHY O'Reilly has the viewpoints he does. He wanted to understand the fear. But O'Reilly was on the show for the sake of argument. He doesn't have any interest in understanding the other side, even if just for the sake of understanding.

I've never been all that fond of Colmes (there's always been some indiscernible off-kilterness I've been unable to pinpoint), but without him, Fox will reduce the show to an even lower level of drivel masqueraded as news. They will find some argumentative "liberal" that they can paint with that red-handed placard, and they will continue to "debate," to bicker really, without ever taking the leap to understanding why it is Sean Hannity sits at one end of the table, and his partner at the other.

Not only is it not news, but it is a testament to the low level of political discourse we have reached. It is always the what, and never the why.

clash of the titans

2008-11-15T14:41:00.000-08:00

If you missed last week's Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly, make sure to catch it online (or below in two parts).

O'Reilly has moments where he seems almost human, a thinking, rational being that agrees the last four years (not eight - - for him, shit only hit the fan with 9/11) were a mess. Cue Stewart attempting to assuage the fears and montra of a man who lives by the creed that America is center-right and that we are a country of traditions, and we see O'Reilly at his most recognizable -- barking blabber and disillusions about who actually lives in this country.

What really struck me was O'Reilly's insistance that Stewart needed to "get out of New York," to "walk around Greenwich Village and tell me it's not completely homogeneous," attempting to argue the point that we city-dwellers have somehow turned a blind eye toward "real America" and toward the thoughts of the people. "You would get killed in Alabama," he tells Stewart, a half-joke I'm assuming aimed toward's Stewart's liberal bias and also his Jewish background. I wouldn't argue with that. But how does that now become the real America? And more importantly, why would we WANT that to be the real America? I don't mind the partisanship in this country and frankly, it is not only idealistic but a fruitless concept to think we could all agree on anything. And why bother? Conflicting discourse makes the world go round.

What frightens me is that so much of our country seems to be clinging to a racist, conservative -- in the most extreme manner of the word -- view of religion and society and feeling as though everybody who does not live that way is living improperly, sinfully, in error. As Stewart so brilliantly points out, to think that we are a country built on ideals of conservatism is a ludicrous disillusion born out of the religious right. This country was conceived as a safe house for people fleeing the constricting nature of the church, seeking to build their own lives under their own rules. We live in a society built upon foundations of progression. To argue that intellectual, city-dwelling people are blandly homogeneous because they are in favor of progress is an insult to what this country means to all Americans.

On that note...

2008-11-08T15:27:00.000-08:00

A great photo of new President-elect Barack Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy, with the caption "It's like we went away for the summer and lost all the weight and got contacts! And also a tan." -- the accompaniment to a hilarious post-election article from New York Mag on why Europe is finally jealous of America.

On a similar note to last week's op-ed post on what having Obama as president will mean to the rest of the world...
Days after Obama's landslide victory, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi responds:

Italians never quite know whether to laugh or cry at Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But many reacted with incredulity and outrage after the prime minister, visiting Moscow on Thursday, amiably called the first African-American president-elect in United States history “young, handsome and suntanned.” Mr. Berlusconi made the remark while meeting President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, saying that Senator Barack Obama’s good looks, his youth and his so-called suntan were “all the qualities” for Mr. Medvedev and the future president to “develop a good working relationship.”

While the comments may seem over the top offensive, Italy is used to this. Frankly, I was surprised the article painted Italians as "uproared" over this, since not only is Berlusconi famous for his outrageously inappropriate commentary and demeanor, but they KEEP ELECTING HIM. OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Economists gauged at their last election in April 2008 that if Berlusconi was reelected over sitting Prime Minister Romano Prodi, the country of Italy as we know it will have economically and socially collapsed within ten years.

[Berlusconi] said that his remark had been “a compliment” and that his critics lacked irony. “If you want to get a degree in idiocy, I won’t stop you,” La Repubblica quoted him as saying. “I say whatever I think.” He said the Italian left was wrong about everything, “including their lack of a sense of humor.” He added: “Too bad for them. God save us from imbecils."

Amen.

The '08 Effect

2008-11-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year of this endless election "season" and the one thing both sides can agree on is that we are tired. The constant bickering of personalities, policies, and politics has made it all too easy to forget that there exists life outside our own. What is perhaps more interesting than how the results of this election will affect us is how the outcome will fair in the rest of the world.

Over the course of my junior year of college, I spent 11 months living and traveling throughout Europe. Most of my time abroad was tinged with the first stages of chaos birthed from the primaries. As an American, there is a set of questions you always field from foreigners -- for a while, it was "What do you think of George Bush?" Soon after, it had become "Are you voting for the black man or the woman?" And eventually, "What do you think about Barack Obama?"

With events like his speech that drew 200,000 in Berlin, we have come to see over time that Americans are not the only ones intrigued by a character like him. However, I always struggled to explain the significance of black Americans in the grand scheme of things, especially to my friends in my home country of Italy, a bizarrely racist country from top to bottom. Through our discussions and the constant influx of election news they received, it became clear that Obama was a novelty to them. They didn't really know what to do with a Kenyan-American that one day could potentially be ruling the free world. As the primaries dragged on, it was obvious that, for all the jokes about him being a messiah, Obama really is teaching Europe what it means to be black.

The role of the black community in American culture is our single most prevalent identity crisis. It has spanned centuries, ever evolving but always a struggle. What I hadn't realized until I lived in Europe was how little the rest of the world understands of the increasingly difficult to define role of black Americans. Cities like London and Paris now have substantial black communities, nearly all stemming from the African colonies England and France occupied for years. Ultimately, Africans moved to Europe on their own accord. By that point, they spoke the same language and had been immersed in centuries of similar culture from the ruling monarchies. While they may have been subordinate, they certainly weren't slaves.

In Italy, the strongest black presence is North Africans, many of whom make a living selling fake Fendis in metro stations and parks. Italians amass most of their information about black culture from American rap music videos, which through the course of mistranslations and cultural barriers gives about as accurate an understanding of the black struggle as Vanilla Ice had of black music. One of the questions I got most frequently would be about the N word, a mystifying concept lost on them entirely. "Why can they say it and you can't?" they would ask, typically followed by a "Look at my bitches! N***a N***a N***a!" they had picked up from watching MTV. It was one of the biggest cultural walls I stumbled upon, especially as Obama began to take the center of the international stage and race, suddenly, was on everybody's lips. How could I even begin to explain this? The entire picture was missing to them.

As the primaries progressed, the front pages of Italian newspapers were littered with coverage of his campaign. The endless drama of the elections was perfect fodder for a country whose own political atmosphere exists more like a circus than a parliament, whose own prime minister is more Penn and Teller than Tony Blair. For the Italians, it seemed, Barack Obama was an intriguing figure, well-read, well-spoken, and well-dressed. Miuccia Prada claimed she designed her men's Fall collection with him as inspiration. While the subtleties of his significance may have been lost on them, the undeniable candor of his message was uplifting for a country awash in political dissolution.

Given the elementary level of race relations in a western country like Italy, imagine what an Obama presidency could do for the preconceived notions of countries like Slovenia, Poland, Russia. Having a public figure like Barack Obama at the forefront of the American spotlight has the potential to integrate the concept of intellectual, powerful black leaders not as a novelty, but as a reality--one that doesn't involve rap videos, baggy jeans and groupie hos. If he succeeds in winning this election on Tuesday, he will not only reinvent the American international image, but he will give many other countries the much needed opportunity to reevaluate their own societal norms and perhaps, one day, be able to say Yes We Can.

Jumping the gun?

2008-10-25T20:36:00.001-07:00

With only a week to go until Election Day, it seems -- knock on wood -- that the majority of Americans know the way it's going to swing. I have staunch Republican friends who are already speaking about next week like it's the morning after the Superbowl -- and they're the Patriots in 2008.

I too find myself feeling awfully calm in these last few weeks. As a Democrat, it's hard to not watch the recent polls -- and the recent gaffes -- and feel like the nail is in the coffin. But what if? In Friday night's Rachel Maddow Show she pulled up a recent video montage of McCain seeming entirely too calm whilst the election world falls apart around him. Then she cut to video of George W. Bush on Election Night 2004, when, by all accounts, Florida had already been called against him. He sat calmly with Laura in plain view of cameras, looking unfettered and at ease considering that, by all accounts, the Democratic party was about to take the White House. And we all know what happened next.

As Maddow outlines above, if McCain takes states that typically go Republican like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Florida -- not an entirely outlandish possibility -- we could be looking at a McCain presidency. It is hard to tell if this is one of those pre-Halloween Osama bin Laden video kind of weeks, sitting ducks waiting for an ambush. The scary thing is, all we can do now is wait.

The 3 am call McCain won't want to get

2008-10-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

One wonders how much remorse the GOP will have when death threats begin pouring in toward Barack Obama.

Assuming the McCain campaign had this one on layaway, saved up for when he floundered in the third debate or maybe just when they got desperate enough to get this desperate....

As the Huffington Post reports, a massive robocall campaign has been enacted by the McCain-Palin team:

The call begins: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC," before telling recipients that they "need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

The phone calls could potentially get the campaign into more hot water than they bargained for, considering that states like Minnesota--just one of a reported 13 that received the calls--have legal bans on robocalls, while others have very strict rules about their construction.

But more than that, the news of this call felt like a blow to the stomach. Palpable nausea. Like catching your ex-lover with their new fling. You can't believe they've stooped that low. After several weeks of low polls and bad reviews for their hate-filled campaign, it is absolutely mind-blowing that advisers not only think this is a good idea, but that they are sleeping at night.

Has McCain forgotten 2004? Has he forgotten what it's like to have slanderous, derogatory lies spewed by your opponent attacking not only your credibility but your ethos as well? Perhaps he has. He is 72 after all.

Perhaps he is just caught up in it all, an old man swept up by the wind and rain of presidential campaigns that he doesn't even recognize who he has become or more importantly who he is creating. While Jon Stewart parodied this idea brilliantly, it actually rings true--John McCain has created the Frankenstein he no longer can control. From rally to rally, he has supporters screaming 'Muslim!' and 'Terrorist!' to nationally broadcast audiences.

But alls fair in love and politics, right? Wrong. What happens if all these terror-driven campaigns pay off? What happens if Obama is assassinated by a fanatic, thinking he's ridding our country of a murderer? This is beyond politics. How will McCain live with himself when he is responsible for violent attacks or homocide toward a presidential candidate, or quite possibly, the president of the United States? You can be sure he'll be out of excuses then.

Pulling the props out of the closet

2008-10-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

With so much on the state ballot this November--a $7 billion deficit, a massive overhaul of regional transportation, billions in secondary legislation--it seems all too reminiscent of 2004 that gay marriage is once again the make-it-or-break-it proposition. But three weeks before the election, the supporters of Proposition 8 have spawned an egregious commercial that has flipped the polls in their favor. In a state so riddled with other problems, the California electorate is once again shifting its ballots into the wrong focus.

The controversial Prop 8 would amend the state legislature passed nearly 6 months ago that currently recognizes gay marriage under the law and would amend the definition to read "only those between a man and a woman." As of Oct. 14, the Financial Times reported that a poll taken over the course of the summer found 47 percent of respondents favored the measure, with 42 percent opposed and 10 percent undecided.

The results of the poll have caused a ripple of anxiety across the state, especially considering the generally positive reception toward the initial ruling. Turn on your California television at any given time and you'll be witness to the cause of the overhaul in support: one of the "Yes on Prop 8" advertisements flooding every channel. “They have raised a tremendous amount of money, and as a result they have significantly out-bought us on TV,” Steve Schmidt, a spokeseman for “No on 8” told the Times. “Every time somebody sees one of our ads, they’ve seen two of theirs.”

The ad tells you several things, all of which are untrue: the passing of Prop 8 would allow people to be sued for their personal beliefs; it would prompt churches to lose their tax exemption; and it would allow for gay marriage to be taught in public schools. "It's no longer about tolerance; acceptance of gay marriage is now mandatory," the voice over reads. [See video below]

So, now that acceptance has become an obligation of us all, let's take a look at what else we may be forced to accept should we neglect discussing the rest of November's ballot: a $9.95 billion bond for the construction of a high-speed train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles; $980 million in bonds for children's hospitals; a mandatory parental notification before minors obtain abortions; shorter parole for nonviolent drug offenders; the prosecution of 14-year-olds involved in gang-related felonies as adults; an allocation of $5 billion of state funds towards alternative fuel research and technology; and $900 million in bonds that would assist veterans in the purchase of farms and homes.

Fiscally, the most prominent of the ballot’s propositions is 1A, which would authorize the transfer of close to $10 billion in funds merely as a down-payment for a Japanese-engineered “bullet train” that would connect the Bay Area with the South Bay. If that number seems too heavy for the levees to hold, then imagine the $45 billion proponents of the project say the train would ultimately call for. Or better yet, how about the $80 billion Libertarian think tank Reason Foundation found was the most accurate estimate to date.

All of this while Gov. Schwarzenegger recently applied for a $7 billion emergency loan because the state is, as the Los Angeles Times wrote on Oct. 3, "close to running out of cash to fund day-to-day government operations and is unable to access routine short-term loans that it typically relies on to remain solvent." The requested funds would need to be in the bank no later than Oct. 28, the designated drop date for a $3 billion payment to over 1,000 school districts across the state. "California faces the potential of a perfect storm created by the financial crisis' effect on liquidity, lower-than-anticipated revenues currently coming into the state, and our late budget," Matt David, Schwarzenegger's communication director, told the Times.

So, while the credit crunch hinders our state pocketbook, we are ignoring billions of dollars in possible legislation we don't even have the loans to make possible. With November's ballot on the line, the state of California could be looking at a period of financial recession in its own house.

Funny time for us to be seeing who's coming out of the closets.

The New New New Journalism

2008-10-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

In my first year in Journalism school, on the first day of a mandatory print newswriting course taught by a veteran former editor of the Los Angeles Times, I was told two things: “Print, as we have known it, is dead. Whatever words we will salvage from it will be slandered, misused, and turned into pander for the Internet masses.”

An optimist he was not; after all, he was a journalist. However, after witnessing the grand arc Internet journalism has taken in the past three years—from mysterious new medium to taking over the industry one paper at a time—I have come to disagree. Print journalism is not dead; rather, it has taken a blow to its bank account. What critics have predicted over the past few years has proved inaccurate: it is not that less people are reading the news, or transgressing into niche markets, but rather that the new medium was not built with a profit-heavy formula. The challenge we face as journalists is only partly the reinvigoration of the unbiased truth. More than anything, it is to make it a business again.

Five years ago, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism began compiling annual reports on the state of American journalism, concerning content, audience, and financial issues. The 2007 report was cautionary: while the pace of the evolution had accelerated immensely, audiences were “splintering,” creating new hot button fears like “hyper localism.” Papers across the country were cutting their international correspondents, limiting their world news sections to several columns at most, hoping the boost in local news and higher pop culture content would also boost sales. “The consequences of this narrowing of focus involve more risk than we sense the business has considered,” the 2007 report concluded.

However, by 2008 a shift in focus had occurred to what the report refers to as the “decoupling of news and advertising.” Since its conception, all mediums of the news have depended heavily on advertising to keep them both operational and profitable. For the print industry, classifieds have traditionally been its main filler of ad space. However, with the development of sites like Craigslist, print classifieds have become practically obsolete. Newspapers have struggled to fill this financial void, causing massive budget and staff cuts at papers across the country. As more and more publications attempt to translate into online mediums, the test is to find a method of profitable advertising that won’t lose its audience. As the 2008 report explains,

This more nuanced recognition is also putting into clearer relief what news people see as their basic challenge: somehow they must reinvent their profession and their business model at the same time they are cutting back on their reporting and resources. “It’s like changing the oil in your car while you’re driving down the freeway,” said Howard Weaver, the chief news executive of the McClatchy Company.

The question then becomes: what now? Over the course of the past two years, many online components like the New York Times’ Times Select and sections of the Wall Street Journal online dropped their $50 to $100 annual subscription fees, despite having several hundred thousand paid subscribers. In doing so, industry heads hoped to make up the loss in revenue from subscriptions in increased traffic to the free sites and their advertisers.

The waning sales of traditional print publications have furthered the inevitable full transition to online. Internet news sites are facing struggles of their own, between advertising and audience targeting, but as the medium grows so does the innovation. Within the past year alone, papers like the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times have given in to common web practices like linking to other sites, using blogs to maintain up-to-the-minute stories, and encouraging third-party content. Newspapers’ resistance to incorporate such commonplace web behavior has hindered them as web presences, like the old man trying to speak the young kids’ lingo. It has given way to the boom of the blogosphere and other cumulative news venues like the Drudge Report, as the translation of the print newspaper has found its online versions feeling archaic and stiff.

What this has given way to as well, however, is the loosely applied “citizen journalism.” A risky endeavor when it comes to strict news, citizen journalism has given way to a new era of commentary. Be it personal blogs or blog components of larger sites, the commentary provided has become as integral a part of the online news experience as punditry has to broadcast news.

The most promising format for the future of journalism is online-only news sites like Slate, a digital magazine since 1996, or The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington’s digital newspaper. Both have adapted to the new formats as others must, accepting the fact that while Slate is technically a daily publication, its content is updated every few hours. New York Magazine practically runs two separate publications, its highly circulated weekly magazine, and its online version composed almost entirely of internet-only content.

These digital formats seem to be faring much better than any print equivalent. Research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson predicts that online advertising will reach $35 billion by 2011, an average growth of 18 percent between 2006 and 2011. The 2008 report attributes this to several factors:

The market research firm offered two main reasons for the shift in priorities in years ahead. First, it considers online ad rates a bargain relative to television and print, which will help it grow. Second, the capability that online offers advertisers to both track and target audiences will be even more appealing once the industry refines its methods of measuring. If the projections are correct, they carry one other implication. While online advertising may be slowing, it is still growing at a brisk pace, while the competition, newspapers and television, are expected to be basically flat.

While newspapers may be dwindling, a common misconception is that magazines are dying out as well. In a July 2008 New York Times profile of Condé Nast publisher Si Newhouse, editorial director Tom Wallace said Internet publications still have a long way to go “to compete with the way we produce words and images in the magazines.” Similarly, Jonathan Newhouse, head of Condé Nast International, said: “I think sometimes commentators throw around these assumptions about what is happening to the industry, going the way of newspapers, and I don’t believe it.”

Not left completely unscathed, magazines did experience heavy budget and staff cuts in the past several years. However, Newhouse has said that the state of Condé Nast, a good barometer for the industry as a whole, is in a strong enough place after their previous cuts that they can ride out the recent blows to the economy as is. According to the Magazine Publishers of America, the total number of magazine readers in 2007 increased about five percent. Additionally, the average number of magazine issues read per month grew six percent, while the percent of the U.S. adult population that reads magazines remained stable, compared to newspapers losing roughly three percent of its circulation annually.

What is even more promising for the magazine industry is its sustainability against the blog and citizen journalism phenomena. What the latter two forums have created is a constant murmur of commentary, but it is widely accepted to be the commentary of the general public. What has driven magazines since their conception—namely lifestyle magazines, the purse strings of the industry—is that they represent a level of expertise and marketed elitism. What magazines represent in the publishing world, as well as in the mind of the reader, is something entirely different than the daily news, and for this they have some solace toward their future.

While there is undoubtedly reason for anxieties within the industry of journalism, the reality of the challenges it faces are basic. As with any company struggling to appeal to its clientele, publishing must find a new manner of effective advertising to fit the new era of publishing we have transitioned into. In the coming years, publishing itself has the potential to transcend almost entirely to an online format, a transition not to be feared as a collapse of a medium but rather a redesign for the sake of its future. In a time of economic anxiety that has everybody on the edge of their seats, the journalism industry must be willing to accept the sacrifices that growing technology presents and realize the birth of a new era of journalism has just begun.

28 Days

2008-10-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

Home stretch. Here we go.

I can't tell if it's depressing or uplifting that the most interesting part of the last month of political sparring has been Tina Fey, but alas.... it is the truth. While the VP debates were entertaining for their shock value (doggonit? really?), last night's presidential debates were more or less as expected.

The town hall structure was a definite detractor for McCain, as he is visibly able to move around less and less as the days go by. As long as we're measuring these in coherence of sentence structure and argument formulation, I think most people were dead-on to agree Obama took it in flying colors. Several sites, including Politico's John Harris and Jim Vandehei, thought the whole affair was lackluster and unrepresentative of the state of current events. Agreed, but at the same time I'm not sure what they are searching for to fill their void. Kennedy? Fireworks? In an era where the same questions are asked by every news outlet in every manner of linguistic formulation, one wonders what jarring question or unexpected answer everybody is hoping for. "Boxers or briefs, Senator?"

I would like to believe that most people like myself have also become apalled by the tone of these last several weeks of campaigning, but somehow I think I'm setting the bar too high. I come from a half-Jamaican, half-caucasian Jewish family, and have been preached at--since this entire debacle began over a year ago--that racism in this country would conquer all. It would be nuanced, it would be snide, it would be sleezy, and it would destroy the Democratic campaign and its leader. I have fought my father tooth and nail on this, that with me comes a generation of people that were not alive to know the deepness of the wounds of racism in the '60s; that with me comes a generation able to move past the fickleness of color, for in reality, we are not even conscious of what color distinctions truly meant to people when it defined their every breath, their role in every inch of society; that with me comes a generation of people that would not utter words such as "that one" or "not ready to lead" that draw so subtley and yet so loudly from the Jim Crowe commands to "sit down boy."

I fear November 4th for more than just the sake of this country. More than an election of new government, this election symbolizes the current state of our humanity and the fact that the same standards to which we have lived since the beginning of organized society are still in place. We are perpetually willing to deny the well-being of the many for the good of the few.

I would love to be taxed less and retain more of my money. Wouldn't we all. But this, for me, is what Liberalism is about, that word so tainted by modern politics that it has become the black plague of schools of thought. Liberalism is the willingness to put yourself second, to look at what is best for society as a whole, and realize that ultimately--maybe not directly, maybe not immediately, but ultimately--this will be best for you, as well.

This election has shown the levels to which people are willing to stoop to further their own personal agendas and leave the rest of the world by the wayside. And for that, I am terrified.

Between stocks and a hard place

2008-09-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Minutes ago, the House of Representatives shot down the proposed bailout package 228-205, causing the stocks to fall over 700 points and bringing all of Washington back to a depressed, frantic square one.

What is so bizarre about this whole thing is how little we actually have learned about these packages that keep getting refused, the most recent being dubbed "a slippery slope to socialism" by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), "a major, major change" by House Speaker Nanci Pelosi, "a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan's coffin" by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and just plain "bold" by President Bush.

What everybody does seem to agree on is that we are in a rush. We must act fast before the money dissapears forever, before more banks collapse, before social security becomes moot. I find it mildly encouraging that, for better or worse, the House is refusing to agree to anything too swiftly.

From the most recent NYT article, the clearest outline of bailout stipulations I've seen thus far:

All sides had to surrender something. The administration had to accept limits on executive pay and tougher oversight; Democrats had to sacrifice a push to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages; and Republicans fell short in their effort to require that the federal government insure, rather than buy, the bad debt.
Even so, lawmakers on all sides said the bill had been significantly improved from the Bush administration’s original proposal.
The final version of the bill included a deal-sealing plan for eventually recouping losses; if the Treasury program to purchase and resell troubled mortgage-backed securities has lost money after five years, the president must submit a plan to Congress to recover those losses from the financial industry. Presumably that plan would involve new fees or taxes, perhaps on securities transactions.

I also find it strange how cautious the candidates have been to speak on the bailout plan, both now and even when prompted during last Friday's debate. It's obvious neither Obama nor McCain has had ample time to review any version thus far, but there is potential in these discussions for one to take a firm stance--as a president should be prepared to do--and slam the other for not being able to act swiftly and executively. Unfortunately, nobody seems ready to be that ballsy.

Hoooo no.

2008-09-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Falling markets, bankrupt banks, $700 billion in impending national debts. The current state of this mess is growing more depressing by the day, exponentially so by the desperate angles taken by news teams eager to find a new way to spin down and out. But then! Slate did what we had all been hoping would never have to be done:

The story follows several women's struggles to set up "savings accounts" to protect themselves from these kind of standstills in "the industry," kind of like a money market for call girls. The high point:

The trick to surviving lean times, says Caroline, is to be patient and do everything it takes to keep your clients. "They are going to come back. I mean, c'mon, it's Wall Street! These guys are never out of the game for that long. That's what's so great about what I do. If you can keep your cool, it's pretty rare that you lose money. Just make sure you keep the man happy."

As if the Emmy's didn't ruin Sunday enough

2008-09-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

All of downtown L.A. was blockaded by limousines Sunday, rendering my single desire to go to the Fresh Fare Ralph's on Flower St. impossible. All I wanted was some pretentious arugula and brie to nibble on whilst I enjoyed the one thing that makes my heart go all atwitter: Mad Men.

But no. ABC had to give their annual ass kissing to all the shows on their network nobody is watching, while ignoring anything decent on air, and rewarding the host of Survivor for not drowning yet. I could live with this display of redudancy, but then you had to go and give me a REPEAT OF MAD MEN??!

Sulking back to Channel 4 I deigned to watch this replacement excuse for entertainment, summed up best by New York mag's Lane Brown:

Where do we begin? We don't know, which we guess puts us in league with the show's five emcees — Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst, and Ryan Seacrest, the nominees for best reality-show host — who kicked things off with an awkward, run-on non-bit about how they'd failed to prepare an opening bit. Then, because the brightest, most creative minds in television simply couldn't think of anything more clever, William Shatner was invited onstage to rip off Heidi Klum's clothes.

Heidi aint bad... but she doesn't hold a candle to Betty Draper.

Talking Heads

2008-09-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

Recent addition Rachel Maddow is busting open the ratings over at MSNBC only weeks after CNN prez Joe Klein called the refreshingly not-Olbermannesque, openly gay anchor 'predictable.'

Ohhhh, network news. When will you learn? Gay always sells. Just look at Anderson!

While her novelty may wear off, there is something extremely refreshing about her approach--less screaming, more reasoning, less reality TV, more journalism. Keep at it, Rach.

It's the economy, stupid.

2008-09-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Have we forgotten 1992? Everybody dig out your James Carville buttons...

The New York Times ran a solid op-ed reacting to McCain's recent comments on the complete collapse of Wall Street, stating that our economy remains "fundamentally sound." Naturally, he's been playing PR catch-up to squash his own ignorance, but one can only hope this--albeit terrifying--turn of events will be the thing to save the Democrats.

By this afternoon, The Huffington Post had posted a story on the string of blunders McCain has made since opening his mouth two days ago. Several sites, including Talking Post Memo, speculated early in the day toward a possible bump in the polls that would bring Obama back on top. Catch CBS News' take here as--could it be?--Obama sits 49-44.

Never has an incumbent party kept office through an election with a weak economy. Here's hoping history repeats itself.

Jeffrey Sachs, public intellectual.

2008-09-12T14:04:00.000-07:00

Common Wealth, the recent release from economist and social scientist Jeffrey Sachs, is his second New York Times bestseller. It is the second effort by the Harvard Ph.D. to lift a seemingly dead horse for one last societal beating, and it is the second time readers will slosh through nearly 400 pages of at times completely banal policy arguments on how best to save the world. And yet people all over the world—everyday citizens, global policy makers, foreign aid workers—continue to buy into his dream of saving the world, one impoverished nation at a time.

Economics and global poverty has been the topic of theoretical debate from Karl Marx to Adam Smith, but none have found the following or the successes of Jeffrey Sachs. He is guided both by an undeterred sense of urgency and, his critics would say, an inflamed ego to the point of relentlessness. But what all seem to agree on is that he has reignited the age-old fight, determined not to let the daunting task of solving global poverty diminish the hope for a solution. He applied theories he proposed as an academic while teaching at Harvard and later the Columbia University Earth Institute, and in doing so salvaged the governments of Bolivia, Poland, and Mongolia. He transcended from merely influencing thought, as a public intellectual, to influencing action globally. And it’s working.

A brief history of the man behind the curtain: A gifted child from the get-go, Sachs showed mathematical promise at the age of 12. He finished high school early, attended Harvard for an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics, and became a tenured Harvard professor at the age of 29. Over the course of the following 19 years, Sachs became the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade, the Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development at the Kennedy School of Government and the Director of the Center for International Development. In 2002, he left to direct the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he remains today.

Academia aside, it was his public work that propelled his theories into view. In 1985, Sachs traveled to the mountains of Bolivia. An inflation rate of 25,000 percent was swallowing the country whole, at a rate unseen since the days of the Weimar Republic. Sachs sat down with government officials and introduced what would soon become his trademark: Shock Therapy. Within days, the country abruptly shifted to a free market economy. He enforced massive layoffs of employees, an overhaul of the tax system, cuts in government spending, and nationwide debt cancellation. When Sachs left, the inflation rate was 15 percent.

Soon after, he traveled to Poland to achieve the same results. Then Slovenia. Then Mongolia. After a failed attempt at overhauling the Russian government, Sachs moved to take on Africa, a decision his critics say is overzealous, ego-driven, and an attempt at redemption after his Russian failures. In a July 2007 Vanity Fair article, head of Britain's Department for International Development in Kenya Simon Bland cast his criticisms on Sachs:

I want to say, 'What concept are you trying to prove?' Because I know that if you spend enough money on each person in a village you will change their lives. If you put in enough resources—enough foreigners, technical assistance, and money—lives change. We know that. I've been doing it for years. I've lived and worked on and managed [development] projects. The problem is, when you walk away, what happens?

Sachs’ would respond by saying that this is a cop out, that the previously accepted excuse—the task at hand is too overwhelmingly grandiose to bother—is not enough, and he has the numbers to prove it. According to Sachs’ 2005 bestselling book, The End of Poverty, Africa can be eradicated of its extreme poverty—subsisting on $1 a day—within 20 years. Currently, annual international aid amounts to $65 billion. By the year 2015, we could feasibly increase that number to $195 billion, saving 8 million lives a year and generating economic benefits off of the new development worth $360 billion a year. By Sachs calculations, these numbers result in less than one percent of the total income of what he calls “the rich world.”

One of the principles Sachs presses repeatedly is that of global cooperation, and it is hard to miss the invocation of John F. Kennedy in his writings. In Kennedy’s Peace Address at American University in 1963, he said:

Too many of us think [that peace] is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief... Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants… Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions—on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned… Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.

Kennedy, no doubt, was an idealist. And while the profundity of his ideas may linger because of his early death, many would argue the greatness that he would have accomplished in life. It is a stretch to say Jeffrey Sachs is a modern day Kennedy, but there is something to be said to those that can successfully sow the seeds of idealism to serve a world plagued by reality.

Despite his critics, what seems to draw people to Sachs’ work is the palpability of his ideas, logical solutions to seemingly impossible problems. In Sachs’ eyes, he is not an idealist, for nothing he does is idealistic but rather necessary. It is problem solving. In an April 2008 US News and World Report Q&A, Sachs’ answer to the end of poverty was simple: think technologically.

People are poor because they lack productivity. They lack productivity because they don't have the tools to become more productive. Those tools include the basic inputs to raise farm yields above subsistence levels. For urban centers, it means broadband, electricity, and working ports. My concern is for the places that need the tools and simply can't pay for them. They're trapped. Those places are where we should give targeted help.

However, is it possible that this accessibility to his ideas and unrelenting hope could become a weakness rather than a strength? Sachs has made a living by bringing global poverty back into the foreground in a palpable manner for those outside the economic sphere. However, critics would say that this diminishes his status as a public intellectual, so awash in his own arguments that he is willing to oversimplify the process.

In an August 2007 blog post entitled “The ‘Decline’ of the Public Intellectuals?” writer Stephen Mack argues “we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.” Many have argued toward the motives of Sachs’ grandiose goals—motivated by pride? Bitter from his failures in Russia?—when here is a man who has taken on the single greatest task in the future of our world.

In the same post, religious critic Jean Bethke Elshtain spoke at a panel discussion on the necessity of cynicism by the modern-day public intellectual:

The public intellectual needs, it seems to me, to puncture the myth-makers of any era, including his own, whether it's those who promise that utopia is just around the corner if we see the total victory of free markets worldwide, or communism worldwide or positive genetic enhancement worldwide, or mouse-maneuvering democracy worldwide, or any other run-amok enthusiasm. Public intellectuals, much of the time at least, should be party poopers.

However, what Elshtain fails to see is the distinction between criticism and party-pooperism. The former requires a skeptic eye aimed at society, geared toward finding its flaws, thus prompting an open discussion on how best to fix them. Criticism, Mack says, is the duty not just of the public intellectual, but of every citizen in a democracy. However, a push for party-pooperism is a push towards cynicism and inaction, a puncturing of the idealism that, though maybe not ultimately attainable, drives progress. To ask the public intellectual to look toward the future with criticisms of the past, but not promise a better world to the next generation, is to ask great thinkers to be lame-ducks. It is a cop-out of action to criticize the failings of the world without getting up to change it.

Jeffrey Sachs has catapulted his cause from economics classroom to the center of the global stage. Bombarded by his fair share of critics calling him naïve, ego-driven, and walking blindly into the dark, Sachs is undeterred at ridding the world of the poverty that plagues it. He is revered as a political activist, a policy maker, and a public intellectual of the academic circuit. Though he may bend the conventions of policy making, he is achieving progress toward a fight most have left by the wayside. For that, he stands far above the rest.