Archive Listing
February 12, 2006 - February 5, 2006

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Pickin' Time
Believe it or not, it is the end of April. Thanks to our monthly subscribers who have made their contributions, for the others waiting until the last minute -- this is it -- the last minute.

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Remember, Amazon.com doesn't tell us anything about you, so we can't say a personal, "Thank You." This post will have to do -- Thank You. If you'd like to take credit for a donation, just drop me a line at Usher@InstaPunk.com and I'll be happy to thank you myself, directly -- be sure to tell me the date and the amount so I know it is you or, at least, I'll know you're really lucky.

Friday, April 29, 2005

Enlightenment in Danger!
Robert Kuttner is concerned. Concerned that the Enlightenment itself is under seige.

We agree. But the culprits are a bit closer to his Boston home than he might appreciate. Mr. Kuttner seems to think that the seige works have been constructed by "Fundamentalist Christians." He is very frightened.

We would like to suggest he travel over to Harvard to inspect the state of the Enlightenment. All the sons of Kant and continental philosophy have been tenured at the venerable institution where the Enlightenment is regarded as an aborted English project with no basis in fact -- since there are no facts. We'll be writting more about this in upcoming posts, but if you'd like a little primer -- get yourself a copy of Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen R. C. Hicks for a very readable history of the ideas that have brought us to this perilous state of affairs so feared by Mr. Kuttner.

THE MISFORTUNES OF OTHERS. Yesterday's entry was no publicity stunt. I'm serious. Now they're going after Zell Miller. Read here. I'm calling on Instapundit, Michelle Malkin (her contact info is incorrect: it should read mmalkin@comcast.net), Hugh Hewitt, PoliPundit, and everyone else who claims to care about the tone of our political discourse to help with this counter-offensive against the vermin who rejoice at the physical ills of their enemies. Wake up. This kind of nonsense won't stop until we make it impossible to post such poison anonymously. I call on all our readers to pester the big blogs to take a stand. Email them, phone them, do whatever is necessary to make them pay attention. And then go to Democratic Underground to help force the louts out of their comfortable closets. You think you can't make a difference? This is one instance where you can.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

HARRIER PIETY. I knew it would happen. As soon as I heard about Laura Ingraham's health situation, I knew the maggots of the left would emerge from the dank underside of the Internet to wish her ill. Michelle Malkin signalled the beginning of the onslaught with a link to this odious comment (one of many) at DemocraticUnderground.com. It's written by a person who calls himself Tom_Paine, as if he fancies himself a noble champion of humanity rather than a vicious bully. I wondered what the real Tom Paine would have thought, and so I searched out an account of him that included some personal details, including his own response to a sly and dishonest attack upon himself:


That's how I'd expect a gentleman to address a personal adversary. The whole chapter is worth reading because every paragraph demonstrates the price that will always be paid by those who express their dissent bravely in the public eye.

I also wondered what the decent-minded of the Internet might do to confront those who creep out of the dark places at such times, and I hit upon an approach that might carry some weight. There is no need for invective, name-calling, cursewords, or scatologies. What I propose is that you and every like-minded friend go to this and similar links to identify specific comments which require acknowledgment. Reply to each with a single demand: Take responsibility for your words by giving your real name. If you can't do this, look into the mirror and see the face of a coward. Then, try to feel the shame you have earned.

Note that you don't have to be a conservative or a Republican to participate in this accounting. If you know of any similar response to the misfortune of Peter Jennings, for example, pursue the perpetrators in exactly the same fashion. (Interestingly, I haven't seen or heard of any such ugliness.) All such people are the equivalent of obscene phone callers, and those of us who congregate in this electronic realm do have a responsibility to maintain some standards. There is a profound difference between combativeness, satire, and ridicule on the one hand and bitter hatefulness on the other. Wishing disease and death on those who disagree with you is over the line, as even the unbalanced Randi Rhodes has lately been forced to concede.

Events like this prove that there is more than one kind of cancer in the world. The cancer that afflicts the Internet may not be organic, but it is -- if left to flourish in the dark -- a potentially fatal pathology. The very least we can insist on is that the carriers stand up like men and identify themselves by name.

Please also take the time to wish Laura Ingraham a speedy recovery. Perhaps a flood of wellwishers can do a little to allay the hurt of the brutes who spoke up before we did.

Thank you..

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Trying to be a Chosen Nation, Even if it Kills Them
One of the best things about the Cold War was that when Chernobyl blew up last time -- nineteen years ago today -- the Soviets didn't want to tell anyone, so everyone got the news when a radioactive cloud drifted into countries that didn't mind telling people that a nuclear power plant was experiencing a minor meltdown somewhere.

Now, it is completely different. Now, the newspaper in the Ukraine is telling the whole world that the next disaster at Chernobyl will be worse than the 1986 meltdown -- costing, well, you figure it out.

NOBLESSE OBLIGE. In sports and popular music there's an almost constant generational turnover. Cal Ripken, Jr., takes his great record into retirement to make room for youngsters like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, who have their own assignations with destiny. Bruce Springsteen steps aside from the spotlight (mostly) so that newer poets of despair like Eminem can charm and inspire their own peers. But for a long time now, network news has seemed curiously immune from this natural relay race of the generations. The anchor men and women seem to have taken their designator literally, attaching themselves to their illustrious chairs as if they had become as immanent as Mount Rushmore. Tom and Peter and Dan kept sitting there year after year after year. At 60 Minutes, the crown jewel of the Tiffany network, that obsolete pocket watch counted seconds but never years as Mike and Ed and Morley and Andy imperceptibly ossified into fright masks. Over at the PBS/NPR fort, Bill and Dan held forth and out against all pretenders, secure and invulnerable behind their rich, fruity, and oh-so-superior voices.

All those graying faces seemed like the Great Wall of Broadcast News. but now, suddenly, there are cracks in the wall and new hope for rising stars. This fact was driven home to us by the latest round of Media Research Council Awards, published last Friday. Yes, there were plenty of greybeards among the winners, but even some eye-popping performances by Dan Rather , Tom Brokaw, and Bill Moyers could not conceal the fact that these three gentlemen were delivering their swan songs. Moreover, the recognition accorded to such giants as Morley Safer, Walter Cronkite, and Mike Wallace seemed reminiscent of the Motion Picture Academy's Jean Hersholt Award, a kind of consolation prize for old-timers who are glad to be remembered at all.

Make no mistake: new blood is surging into the body of broadcast news. We note with pleasure the attainments of rising network stars like Keith Olbermann, Aaron Brown, David Gregory, Matt Lauer, and Byron Pitts. And we're positively delighted at the growing corpus of female talent,  including some veterans like Katie Couric and Claire Shipman, of course, but more importantly some faces and voices that were quite new to us.

Two in particular we'd like to single out for special attention, because they appear to be offering the kind of balanced perspective that will rebuild the foundation of the mainstream media in ways that are appropriate for our new century. First up is a member of the print press, Deborah Horan of the Chicago Tribune. On May 24, 2004, she wrote this little gem during a visit to Iraq:


People have been saying the newspapers can't compete with TV or the Internet in attracting younger consumers. Well, not unless they know how to write stories that will touch the hearts of our beloved kids. That's what Deborah Horan knows how to do. How could anyone capture more brilliantly the sorrow and the pity of post-Saddam Iraq? Not even television could give us a more vivid image of the consequences of American imperialism than this word portrait of fine young women deprived of the freedom to hang out with their equally cool young friends at the club. It's more like a cold hand at your throat than anything. We look forward to great things frm Ms. Horan in the future.


We're even more impressed by our second spotlighted newcomer, Kimberly Dozier. CBS News had the smarts to snap her up early and put her on the air in its national newscasts. In her most notable performance, she too reported from Iraq and found a perspective on the fall of Saddam that too few Americans have the wit to appreciate. We were especially struck by balanced insights like this one from her December 16, 2003 report about the capture of Saddam:


You can view a more extended excerpt here. Like us, you may be bowled over by what you see and hear. It struck us so forcibly that we did some research to see if we could find any precedent for such penetrating foreign policy analysis. Amazingly, we stumbled on a 50-year-old bit of newsreel film narrated by one Virginia Dozier and filed from the tragically downhearted nation of Germany just after the American colonial adventure called World War II. You can (and really should) see it here. Is it possible that Kimberley has inherited the mighty torch of truthtelling from a precocious grandmother? We would like to think so. For some reason, Virginia never filed another report from Germany -- or anywhere else -- and we found no explanation for her eclipse other than intimations and a cryptic reference to footage that had been omitted from the U.S. army film she used as a source in her report. The following still was cited as representative of that footage.


Thankfully, Kimberley shouldn't experience the ill treatment suffered by her putative grandmother. As far as we know, there was no film of massed dead bodies taken in the Saddam regime. CNN and company had the good taste to refrain from such sensationalistic journalism. We hope and believe that Kimberley will go on to enjoy the kind of career Virginia was denied.

Party on, Deb and Kim. We salute you.

Monday, April 25, 2005

There Will Be Things
An article in The Charlotte Observer (Source Archive) last week seemed to conjure images of our reading this week in Adam.48. The favorite? The virtual girlfriend named, Vivienne. And, so it goes.

Lots of Really Big Casualties
Ninety years ago a battle began that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers in one of Britain's worst military disasters -- Gallipoli.

Twenty thousand people turned out today for a memorial service.

It is said, that at the height of the fighting, the waters around the peninsula were reddened with blood as far as 50 metres from the shore. We didn't want you to forget.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Big Fisherman, Alias the Pope

"Cardinal Ratzinger's writings, which are full of intellectual nuance and shadings of meaning, show a ready acknowledgement of the changes in the church's positions over the years -for example, turning away from the idea that it is a sin to enjoy sex, or that woman are inferior."

The NY Times seems to specialize in incredibly empty-headed statements like this, although the article is generally interesting and seems somewhat fair and accurate . . . although they made need to upgrade their editor.

Speaking of editors, I've been sending in just a ton of exceptional material to you guys, why such sporadic use of my brilliance?

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