Sunday, August 27, 2006

That’s a smear?

RI Senate candidate Stephen Laffey wrote anti-gay columns in college. When someone pointed that out to the press he called it a smear. He’s been smeared???

Oh, and he “apologized.” Yeah right:

“Do I regret some of these things? Sure,” he said. “But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.”

Uh, fag-bashing for fun?

In one column, Laffey said he has never seen a happy homosexual.

“This is not to say there aren’t any; I simply haven’t seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet,” he wrote. “All the homosexuals I’ve seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life.”

In another column he wrote that pop music was turning the children of America into sissies, and criticized the singer Boy George, referring to him as “it.”

“It wears girl’s clothes and puts on makeup,” he wrote. “When I hear it sing, ‘Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,’ I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs.”

The articles were in a paper published by College Republicans. Did someone say chickenhawk?

Freeload’s textbooks

Offering free e-versions of textbooks with ads raises all kinds of concerns, but it looks like I don’t have to weigh them too thoughtfully yet:

Freeload Press seems unlikely to be the company that will succeed in adding commercial messages to the typical college textbook. Its problems begin with that unfortunate name, which conjures an image of party crashers cadging free beer, not a publishing concern striving for the highest intellectual standards. It was founded two years ago and has found the going slow.

Excluding study aids, it offers 15 textbook titles, most of them in math and business, and relies on an even smaller base of authors who contribute to multiple books. This summer, the company announced that the University of Michigan was the 100th college to assign one of its textbooks, but this number exaggerates the popularity because it includes those that have tried it once and have not opted for a second trial.

The number of universities that will be using any of its free textbooks as a required text this fall is only 38.

Laurel & Hardy at the soda fountain

As it happens, I live off Oliver Hardy Lake. No one knows anymore because college kids stole the sign. I can’t say I’m a Hardy fan, but Joe Gandelman is. He dug up this video from the short Men ‘O War. Says Joe:

It’s their famous Soda Fountain Skit. Notice:

--That this is one of the more verbal of their routines.

--Their adept use of slapstick.

--The guy at the soda fountain, supporting player Jimmy Finlayson, who often played their foil. He originated the “DOH!” expression now used by Homer Simpson.

--Abbott and Costello later did their own version of this skit - a lot rougher and meaner in tone but equally funny.

Read more about Laurel and Hardy here.

Here are more Laurel & Hardy clips posted on YouTube.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Lesbian candidate’s win reinstated in Alabama

The Alabama Democrats did the right thing:

Patricia Todd was reinstated Saturday as the Democratic Party’s nominee for a seat in the Alabama Legislature. The Alabama Democratic Party Executive Committee voted 95-87 to reject the ruling of a subcommittee two days ago that had voted to disqualify Todd. (story)

Todd beat Gaynell Hendricks in the primary. But Hendricks’ mother-in-law filed an appeal filed with the Democratic Party claiming that Todd timed the filing of her campaign finance report with the Secretary of State’s office shortly before the deadline to keep voters from learning she was supported by the Victory Fund, a Washington DC-based organization that helps the campaigns LGBT candidates. [...]

Observers said the dispute between the two Democrats had more to do with race than sexuality.  Todd is lesbian and white. Hendricks is straight and black.  Some key Democrats in Alabama were alleged to have wanted Todd out because of her color.

Party chairman Joe Turnham said that the key factor in Saturday’s decision to overturn the committee ruling was that no candidate had followed the disclosure rule for nearly 20 years. [...]

There is no Republican running for the seat which means Todd will become the first lesbian to sit in the Alabama legislature.

Talking sense on terror

“Now the way I see it you can’t have terrorism without terror.”

“One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.”

-zefrank

I’ve pointed to this piece before, but only in passing. Bruce Schneier inspires me to point to it again. It’s one of the most trenchant commentaries on terrorism I’ve seen. Anywhere. Ever. 2 Minutes 18 seconds.

Watch it. Then click Save on your Democracy Player so you can watch it again the next time the press and the politicians live up to the terrorists’ expectations.

How we can fight terror

After recounting a litany of overreaction similar to but not including the story of the guy who accidentally dropped his iPod into an airplane toilet, prompting a full-scale terror alert, in What the Terrorists Want Bruce Shneier remind us:

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want. [...]

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we’re terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists’ actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

How?

The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways. Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and increasing actual security. I’ll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn’t engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn’t write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn’t use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we’d reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It’s time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation—and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized.

Via Barry Campbell at Enrevanche.

Friday, August 25, 2006

I don’t blog for traffic. Really.

A good thing too.

Today my traffic was unusually high, double the average day. So I looked into it to find out why. Googlebombing. A throw away post I wrote so I could go to bed and still meet my self-imposed four-a-day minimum. It has a trackback from Googleblog so people are coming, looking and leaving and my traffic doubled. I’ve pretty much learned that’s how a small blog like mine gets blog traffic.

An inadvertent typo in April sent traffic through the roof with people expecting to find a religious conversion. I had a run-in with Wonkette that I’d rather forget (and won’t link to). And my best traffic ever was when a site known for outing famous people posted the simple (suggestive) phrase ”Oh… So gay!” linked to my post on the origins of the word ‘gay.’

The world beat a path to my blog to find out which DC politician I had outed. They left just as quickly, some feeling dismayed and deceived and most never having read the least little bit of my artful handiwork. So if you lust after traffic, you can get it. Just remember:

Most blog traffic is trash… Everyone knows it. If you look at your stats, you’ll learn that half of your traffic--or a lot more than half--comes from search engines. People type in things like “nipple schoolgirl goat priest molasses,” and they end up at your site for ten seconds, and they leave, hopefully disappointed. Those people aren’t “visitors,” no matter how much you like to think they are. They’re just lost.

The guy who wrote that has since let it lapse. Too bad. It was a good post:

Even worse, you may be getting traffic because big bloggers link to you. That doesn’t make you a success. It makes you a pet, living on table scraps. When the scraps stop coming--when you say the wrong thing and stop toadying--those tasty scraps can stop coming, instantly, and then you find out how much readers really care about you.

I’ve not toadied. But I have been linked to by the big blogs. The biggest of the big (and my hero, Cory) found me I don’t know how and linked. Not even a blip of traffic. Andrew Sullivan got me traffic and wrote a fine post, but he called me “Typical Joe” (horrors!) and I did come away from that one feeling vaguely like a begging hungry pet.

Internet fame is overrated anyway. Remember Gary Numa Numa Brolsma? His Internet fame began in his Jersey bedroom with a webcam in the fall of 2004. He had no idea what was in store for him. 13,367,200 views.

By Spring of 2005 he had been on Good Morning America and turned down an interview request by the NYTimes. It found his performance “earnest but painful” and called his posting it on the Internet a “grave mistake.” The paper of record also reported that “according to his relatives, he mopes around the house.”

Moldovan pop band O-Zone parlayed his performance into a Today Show appearance and a Universal contract, but the song, Dragostea Din Tei, looks destined to be a one hit wonder. If they’re lucky.

This week Rocketboom checked in with Gary. He’s making a new version of the video - “not the same but similar to the original” - and says YouTube is planning a contest. I’ll post about it on my blog.

Maybe if there’s a typo I’ll top a thousand visitors. That’s all the fame I need.

Really.

Directory of Lawyers Defending RIAA lawsuits

Ray Beckerman, a NY lawyer who represents people being sued by the RIAA, has put together a directory of lawyers who are actively contesting peer to peer file sharing cases brought by the RIAA against the public at his Recording Industry vs The People blog.

There’s one attorney from Georgia on the list:

*Caldwell, Michael A. DeLong, Caldwell & Bridgers, LLC Suite 3100 Centennial Tower 101 Marietta St., N.W. Atlanta, GA 30303 (404)979-3150 Email:

Not bad considering that Illinois and California only have one each as well.

He’s looking for others to add to the list. If you know of an attorney doing this good work, let them know at .

Google Print contract released

I’ll be interested to watch reaction to this:

A mere two months after the University of California begins its book-digitization project with Google, the university may provide the search company with a whopping 3,000 books a day for scanning. That nugget, and many others, can be found in a confidential contract that allowed California to join Harvard and Stanford Universities, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library, in the search-engine company’s elaborate and controversial library-digitization effort.

The contract was released in part as a response to an open-records request from The Chronicle.

“The Children’s Machine”

Ben doesn’t much like the new name:

That’s now the name of the $100 laptop, or one laptop per child. Fits up to six children inside.

Why is it that the publicity images of these machines are always like this? Ghostly showroom white and all the kids crammed inside. What might it mean? I get the feeling that we’re looking at the developers’ fantasy. All this well-intentioned industry and aspiration poured into these little day-glo machines. But totally decontextualized, in a vacuum.

This ealier one was supposed to show poor, brown hands reaching for the stars, but it looked more to me like children sinking in quicksand.

Indian Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee, explaining last month why his country would not be placing an order for Negroponte’s machines, put it more bluntly. He called the laptops “pedagogically suspect.”

His is not the first, or the worst, criticism I’ve seen. I find none persuasive. Negropante speaking, that I find persuasive.

And I don’t much care what they call it.

Lovin’ libraries

Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut:

Yesterday I came across a truly gorgeous book of photographs by Candida Höfer titled, Libraries, a title which pretty much says it all, because that is just exactly what it is, one rich, sumptuous, photo of a library interior after another. It’s like porn for book nerds. Seriously. They are gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered. (ha. sorry.)

He’s got 13 more. And don’t forget to check out the supplementary materials.

Via CNet.

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Googlebombing

Failure. Still. After all this time. But I haven’t seen any fun successful new ones since.

Yet another battery recall

My Mac is back. I hope to have it configured and back in action tomorrow - 4 weeks to the day after it went down. Better check the battery:

Apple Computer said today that it was recalling 1.8 million battery packs from some models of its laptop computers because of a risk that they could overheat and catch fire.

The batteries were made by a unit of Sony, which also made the 4.1 million laptop batteries that Dell recalled last week.

The Apple recall is the second-largest safety recall in the consumer electronics industry, after Dell’s. Though smaller than the Dell recall, it affects a greater percentage of Apple’s customers.

Apple is recalling batteries from some iBook G4 and PowerBook G4 laptops, representing a third of the notebook computers it sold from October 2003 through August 2006. For some customers, it will be the second recall for the same problem. Replacement batteries sent as part of an earlier recall should now be replaced themselves, the company advised.

Here’s the Apple Battery Recall page.

New Hampshire: Still a primary player

Extended family, today in the Washington Post:

The Democratic National Committee has moved to reduce the influence of the longtime first-in-the-nation presidential primary state: New Hampshire. It has done so by (1) inserting another state’s party caucuses (Nevada’s) between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire vote and (2) scheduling the South Carolina primary right after New Hampshire’s. Political leaders in the Granite State are, of course, resisting the change and threatening to ignore the new schedule.

But in fact, it may be time for New Hampshire to reflect on its traditional role in the nomination of presidential candidates, and perhaps face up to the need for some changes. [...]

Even with the DNC discussing its alterations in the primary process, presidential hopefuls have continued to come to New Hampshire. In fact, the state need not be first, or even second, in the presidential primaries to be an important factor in the nomination process. Its economic standing, its political heritage and traditions, its continuing high level of citizen engagement, its voters’ questioning and testing of candidates, and its current standing as one of the few contested states all combine to make it an ideal testing ground for presidential candidates.

New Hampshire’s retail politics—the level of political engagement—will not be replicated in Nevada or South Carolina. In New Hampshire, more than three-quarters of the electorate votes in presidential primaries. Survey data indicate that almost all voters in the state pay “some” or “a lot” of attention to the primary, and over two-thirds of the voting-age population watches or listens to a presidential candidate debate during primary seasons.

New Hampshire should work with the Democratic and Republican national committees on changes in the nomination process.

Read the whole thing; I’m convinced. Great piece Ross!

Neanderthal men on women

The dinosaurs of unenlightened gender incivility are out in force this week. For starters, World o’Crap points to this pile of it from John Stossel:

Dov Charney is a fast-talking 36-year-old entrepreneur whose company has a loose, sexy atmosphere. As you might guess, some former workers have sued him for sexual harassment.

Charney pays his 4,000 employees, mostly immigrants, an average $12.75 an hour, plus subsidized lunches, health care, and free English classes. […]

Charney feels free to engage in sexual relationships with staff members. “If it’s a truly consensual loving relationship,” he says, “there’s nothing wrong with it. I think that those relationships can be very healthy and are very much part of living in a free world.â€Â�

Says SZ, “Yes, immigrant women, having sex with the boss is very much part of living in a free world.  Remember that!” She’s got more.

Then Rebecca Traister (from whom I lifted the wonderful dinosaur locution above) reports on the much discussed “Don’t Marry Career Women” piece that has since been pulled and reframed as a ”Career and Marriage Debate.” Another piece by the same author, Michael Noer, titled “The Economics of Prostitution” which compares “wives” to “whores” has also disappeared from the Forbes site:

“The story about careers was taken down so we could put up a new, enhanced package which includes Michael’s original story,” said a Forbes.com spokeswoman in an e-mail late Wednesday. She said that she did not know when or if the “wife or whore” story would go back up. On Tuesday, the same spokeswoman had e-mailed Salon to say that “the piece and its sourcing speaks [sic] for itself. Forbes is known for its provocative opinion and Forbes.com’s readership—both male and female—expects nothing less.” Noer was out of the office this week—it has been reported http://www.gawker.com/news/forbes/remainders-michael-noer-computer-camp-stud-goes-into-hiding-196207.php">elsewhere that he was ironically attending a wedding—and Forbes.com editor Paul Maidment was also on vacation.

On the merits:

Much of the data on which Noer drew came from conservative think tanks or dubious-sounding publications. The National Marriage Project. “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” a 2006 study that even Noer admitted is “controversial.” Sylvia Ann Hewlett. (He also cited more mainstream sources, like USA Today.) But the traditionalist, reactionary bent of many of his footnoted sources only amplified his police siren of a thesis.

An accompanying slide show listed the “Nine Reasons to Steer Clear of Career Women,” starting with the news that a professionally successful woman won’t want to marry you—“you” being Noer’s male reader; he didn’t bother to pretend that he might have any female eyes skimming his work—because high-achieving women “search less intensively for a match,” and “have higher standards for an acceptable match than women who work less and earn less.”

If your working girl should unwisely deign to hitch her wagon to your star, according to Noer, it won’t be long before she’s cheating on you, a quagmire illustrated by a photo of a hussy lounging in red lingerie, barely concealing her adulterous assets. According to Noer, working women stray when a wife ventures outside the home, because a job increases the chances that “[she’ll] meet someone [she] likes more than you.” That surely doesn’t sound like a stretch in this case.

Then there’s this from the cute little baby dinosaur, Tucker Carlson:

MORGAN: I'm assuming
that she is going to make the run, unless she sees polling or evidence
otherwise right up at the year from now.

CARLSON: Rich, the truth is there are so few men left in the
Democratic Party. There are so many wussies at the helm of that party.

MASTERS: Gee, thanks.

CARLSON: Nobody has the huevos to stand up to Mrs. Clinton
and say, you, you can't win, step back,
you're not running for president. Nobody is in charge. So she just bulldozes everybody. That's
the truth of it. And you know it.

MASTERS: It's not
the truth of it.

Those like Tucker who want women back in the 50s where they belong would do well to remember that “the truth of it” is that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. But backwards and in high heels.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Go and buy the CD!

The video is out. BUY THE CD. Don’t download this song…

Same Gender Unions - Some Closing Thoughts

by Lyn Perry from Bloggin’ Outloud

If you’ve been following the debate so far (index of posts here), I think it’s clear by now that the majority of my argument against “gay marriage” is based on a biblical foundation (following an evangelical interpretation) and relies without apology on historic and traditional precedent.  As noted in previous entries, I believe this to be a quite compelling position as it requires those who seek to change the status quo to prove that marriage as traditionally understood is not in the best interest of our society.  To put it bluntly, why mess with the standard that has served civilization for millennia?

Some will insist that marriage is in such a deplorable state currently that it needs to be redefined in order to be salvaged or bolstered.  The proposition is made that same gender unions “would strengthen support for the institution of marriage and could eliminate dilution of it through the establishment of alternative arrangements that fall under the umbrella of ‘domestic partnership’ “ (so aTypical Joe).

My response is that in fact same gender unions do dilute the institution and - even further - would open the door to a cultural acceptance of polygamy, incest, and pedophilia.  When gender is arbitrary, so is number, relationship, and age.  And ridiculous accusations that traditionalists are prophesying that “men will be marrying their dogs” (so Andrew Sullivan) is simply an hyperbolic ploy that would deter us from acknowledging the truth that such a slide toward immorality is already taking place.

There, I said it.  Homosexuality and like practices (those mentioned above as well as pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, and pornography) are immoral.  This is not a politically correct position to maintain in a pluralistic society where even tolerance (which implies a judgment that the other is deviating from a standard) must give way to acceptance and eventual endorsement.  But it is, or at least has been, the cultural norm.  That is why we see today an attack on the institution of marriage.  It is a standard that, by its very existence, judges other sexual relationships as out of bounds.

The answer, then, is not to change the definition of marriage to include same sex partnerships, but to address those cultural challenges that threaten its viability.  Misapplication of divorce law, casual cohabitation, physical/emotional abuse, and other issues that do not promote a healthy, lifelong mutual relationship between one man and one woman ought to be addressed to insure the strengthening of marriage.  And in so doing we will honor that one relationship that has served as the core of societal stability for thousands of years.

The political and practical application of all of this?  I understand that we live in a pluralistic society and that the population is not compelled to hold my values. That’s what’s great about a democracy.  We can tolerate differences.  You have the right to be wrong.  So do I.  But I also have the right to defend what I feel is an attack on what has proven best for society - the construct of marriage as historically defined. 

And no, I’m not advocating a theocracy. I simply believe God has set moral laws in place that work like natural laws - if we follow them, things tend to work out, if we don’t, we’re kicking against the goads. Do I want the (or a) Church to rule through the State?  No.  But do I advocate the legislation of morality for the benefit of society?  You bet.  And you do too.  The point is not will we legislate moraltiy - all laws are enacted morals - but to whose standard will we adhere? I affirm it is the standard on which we established our nation centuries ago.  Same gender unions seek to change that.  That is why I can not endorse them.

Thank you for listening these past few weeks as Joe and I have “diablogged” on this topic.

Lyn

Polygamy and Same Sex Marriage

Parsing polgamy:

At Volokh.com, IGF contributor and lawyer David Link explains why, in legal terms, the differences between same-sex marriage are vast. SSM fits neatly within the existing legal framework of marriage; polygamy would require rethinking marriage law from top to bottom. “If the husband died, would the wives continue to be married to each other? Why or why not?...And every question like these leads to others.” Could a wife divorce one other spouse but stay married to the others? Again, why or why not? How many spouses could contest a divorce? What about child custody? Who would be responsible for child support? Who would be liable for debt? The problem isn’t just that the answers are unclear; it’s that no answer makes more sense than any other, because no answer fits within today’s concept of marriage. In that sense, polygamy is literally incoherent.

Sonny Perdue: “I like land”

I would too if I could get me a deal like this:

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue spent $2 million to buy about 20 acres of Florida land just miles from Disney World, purchasing the property from a wealthy Republican donor.

Perdue bought the land from Stanley Thomas, a Georgia mega-developer with a fleet of planes that the governor used at least once to get to a West Coast fundraiser. The 2004 purchase came a little more than a year after Perdue appointed Thomas to the state Board of Economic Development. About a year after the purchase one of Thomas’ companies, Fourth Quarter Properties, donated a whopping $250,000 to the state Republican Party.

Perdue said there was nothing improper about the deal. The Republican governor said that he bought the land in Florida because purchasing property in Georgia while he was governor would have created a conflict of interest.

So waht’s THE BIG DEAL?

The land is adjacent to a new toll road that is being constructed that will run directly to Disney World about 6 miles away. The road is set to be completed in December, Florida transportation officials said.

Real estate experts in Florida said the area around Disney World has been experiencing rapid growth and property like Perdue’s will almost certainly skyrocket in value. [...]

Lots of a half acre or less at the nearby Reunion Resort have sold for up to $650,000, according to property records. Conservative estimates show that if Perdue sold half-acre lots on just half of his property he stands to make millions of dollars.

Via Steve Benen who reminds us that while the details of this deal aren’t black and white, Perdue is in good Republican company:

In addition to Purdue, there's Senate candidate Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.), Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Rep. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), and, of course, former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), all of whom have been involved in dubious real-estate controversies lately.

Did I mention that the Whitewater probe, which showed no wrongdoing on the Clintons' part, cost $70 million and lasted seven years?

You start out stealing songs, then you’re robbing liquor stores and selling crack and running over s

Weird Al Yankovic’s anti-RIAA anthem:

You don’t want to mess with the RI-double-A

They’ll sue you if you burn that CDR

It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma

Or a seven year old girl

They’ll treat you like

the evil hard-bitten criminal you are…

Don’t download this song!

Via Tailrank.

Randall Terry’s estrangement from gay son

The Advocate:

Randall Terry, a leading conservative Christian, actively promotes “family values issues” in his Florida state senate race, but his gay son, Jamiel, says things are not what they seem. Among the senior Terry’s pledges are preserving traditional marriage and opposing adoptions by gays. He has touted efforts to stop abortions. His campaign mailers sum up the value he puts on family: They show a picture of him with his wife, a daughter, and three grinning young sons; the photo was taken before a fourth son was born this summer.

But Jamiel said the picture is missing two people: him and his sister, Tila, both of whom are adopted. Both have been estranged from their father since Jamiel came out as a gay man and Tila had a child out of wedlock.

Jamiel said the self-image that his father is crafting and the campaign message about strong families ignores part of his own family history. He said voters have a right to know about that.

“He is very big on image,” Jamiel said. “In a large way Tila and I mess up that image.”

iPod woes

Has Apple Computer hit a wall?

The company hasn’t had a significant update to its product line this year, with the only change being the addition of a smaller-capacity 1GB iPod Nano in February.

“It’s possible that we’re at a point where the path to taking the next step is less clear and less straightforward, even for a company with the technology expertise and creativity of Apple,” said IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian.

Other reasons could explain the radio silence out of Cupertino, Calif., Kevorkian said, including the fact that Apple has decided to phase out the PortalPlayer processor from its next-generation Nano and reports that the company has faced design challenges with the successor to its video iPod.

Whatever the reasons, the competition is moving forward.

RELATED: Sony - who missed the iPod boat by dropping the Walkman ball - buys a video site.

Wexler, The Hill & Johnson

Like Stephen Colbert, I like Robert Wexler - not least because of how he handled his own Colbert interview. Today The Washington Post has a story on “The Hill,” a documentary set in Wexler’s office:

Over the course of its six half-hours, “The Hill” (debuting tonight on the Sundance Channel) captures several aspects of official Washington that scripted dramas—with their emphasis on scandal, corruption and power-mongering—usually don’t. One is that the town can’t run without the smarts and hustle of some very young people.

One of these people is the putative star of the series, Eric Johnson, Wexler’s chief of staff. “I’m 33,” he tells a tour group in the series’s opening scene, “and I’m past my time. People look at me and go, ‘What are you still doing here?’ ”

Later we learn that the “glimpses of the staffers’ personal lives” work only intermittently. Those with Johnson are best:

Much stronger—probably because the filmmakers had access—are the domestic sequences involving Johnson, a gay man who is raising a baby with his partner.

Here’s a profile of Johnson. At age 19 he ran for the school board. As a Republican?

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

If Apple bought YouTube

Cool speculation:

As most know, with the exception of iTunes, Apple has been a laggard when it comes to the web.  But buying YouTube, Steve Jobs could leapfrog to the top of the heap.  After all, he would end up with immediate presence within the ranks of the top 50 web properties (one that’s still growing at a rapid clip).

YouTube would also, for the first time, give Apple a platform to tap into the highly-coveted stream of online ad revenues, particularly within the fast-growth, high-CPM video ad segment.  And by owning a leading platform for user-created content, distribution, and social networking, Jobs could fill in nearly all of Apple’s strategic holes (vs. web competitors) in one fell swoop.

But to assess the real (near-term, material) value of such a deal for Apple, let’s go back to iTunes.  As we all know by now, the success of iTunes is rooted in its tight integration with the iPod, both in terms of its end-to-end user experience as well as its “razor-and-blade” business model.  On the latter, Steve Jobs proved his brilliance by sacrificing digital music profits and making it up with sales of his high-margin iPods.  The result has been market dominance… 75% market share.  But sales are slowing, and he needs a new catalyst.

Enter YouTube.  The online video phenom can be to the video iPod what iTunes was to the audio iPod.  It’s not difficult to imagine mass consumers, especially tweens, downloading their playlists of YouTube “video snacks” and viewing them on the go with their video iPods.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Hammered

Maybe he was bucking for a spot at the top of the Princeton Review’s survey of best party schools? (Austin got it, Athens wasn’t even on the list.) Romenesko:

Red & Black editor-in-chief David Pittman says his paper has been “hammered” for running two alcohol-related stories. One piece chronicled a night of bar-hopping, while another told readers how to play two drinking games. “There is a difference between realizing drinking is something that happens on this campus and encouraging the behavior shown in our articles last week,” writes Pittman. “As for The Red & Black running those stories, I take complete blame.”

RELATED: The end of the Top Party School’s ranking?