Lyndon Johnson once said, "I want a man who can kiss my ass in a department store window at high noon and tell me it smells like a rose." It isn't hard for a President or an Attorney General to find people like that. What's hard is for the Emperor to understand why so many people share the delusion that he's not wearing any clothes.
NY Resident, Time still does sound authoritative on subjects the reader knows little or nothing about. The shallowness and misconceptions of its reports appear more clearly, though, when they report on something the reader has some expertise in. When they report on the subject in which I am expert, personal finance, I know how shallow and ill-informed their reports are. I assume that people who are experts in other fields like taxation, war, agriculture, and science have the same experience. You only find out what rubbish Time prints when they report on a subject you know something about, which you couldn't have known at age 11.
You aren't going to believe this, but as the other Stengel said, you could look it up. Richard Stengel graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and as a Rhodes Scholar proceeded to study history at Oxford. You'd think a man with that much education would know that, contrary to his claim, the unamended Constitution does not prohibit women from voting. Actually, it leaves to the states the power to set qualifications for voting, which it why some states allowed women and 18-year-olds to vote before others did. Or that, contrary to his claim, the original Constitution does not limit the federal government. Actually, it does. For example, the Constitution forbids a tax on exports. Why such ignorance on the part of a man who was awarded such high academic honors from Princeton and Oxford Universities? Apparently, because you can get high academic honors from Princeton and Oxford without knowing what you're talking about.
I used to read "Inside Higher Education" via Instapundit. I even used to comment there. I have given up commenting and soon I suppose I'll no longer bother reading it, either. Better to read "Minding the Campus." "Inside Higher Education" puts the cloud-cuckoo-land academic mentality on parade. They seem to think that the main problem colleges face today isn't the ever-increasing tuition, the intellectual corruption, or the viciously enforced left wing political correctness, but the stinginess of state legislators. There is no use listening to people like that, let alone attempting to talk to them. Don't bother.
Prices generally go up during wars. The U.S. Treasury issued bonds during WWI which were redeemable in gold to protect the bond buyers against just that sort of inflation. FDR, the closest thing the United States has ever had to a dictator, ordered (not legislated) all American owners of gold to sell their gold in exchange for the paper dollars he intended to inflate. The Supreme Court ruled that since private ownership of gold was disobedient to FDR's decree, the war bonds need not be redeemable in gold no matter what the bond indenture said or what promises the Treasury made when they issued them. Don't believe anybody who tells you that the Treasury can never default. The owners of the gold-backed war bonds learned otherwise, to their cost.
I cannot agree with the review at all. The protagonist is a lying weasel who threatens a false accusation of sexual harassment against his boss to extort money from him. His wife is an unfaithful bitch. The next door neighbor, a retired Marine officer, is a Nazi who tyrannizes his family and is a secret homosexual who eventually commits murder. I have lived in American suburbs most of my life exactly because the people who live there aren't anything like the cartoonish characters in this movie. I know enough history to recognize a Nazi when I see one and the retired Marine who lives next door to me is anything but. It's hard to say which movie is the worst I've ever seen but this garbage is a candidate.
Callipygian1, no, the MSM will never return to reporting the news instead of their own biases. First, the pay and prestige are vastly better for journos who voice their bosses' opinions than for reporters who dig up facts. It's no mystery why Peter Jennings explained the 1994 electoral results as "The voters had a temper tantrum last week..." Saying things like that is how you get promoted at ABC News. Second, you don't even get hired as a reporter if you haven't gone through a journalism school which taught you that journalism is the "Fourth Estate", an unelected and unofficial branch of government whose purpose is to wield power rather than to inform.
Oprah Winfrey need not care how many viewers she loses. Her show is due to end in September, 2011. Her network decided this in view of the declining ratings of daytime tabloid television, the same reason Phil Donohue couldn't make a comeback after inventing the genre. All shows, all types of shows, and all show biz careers, have a life cycle and Ms. Winfrey is reaching the end of hers. So, why shouldn't she vent her political opinions, which probably agree with those of her shrinking audience?
Dig this from Steve and Cokie Roberts from October, 2008: "Moderate Republicans...in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic feel increasingly uncomfortable in a party dominated by evangelical Christians, symbolized by McCain's Vice-Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a Maryland Republican who was defeated in the (2008) primary, told the Washington Post, 'We're in this bad place as a country because of the evangelicals, the neocons, the nasty, bitter and mean, very clever ideological groups that use money, technology, fear and bigotry to lead people around.'" To a liberal pseudo-journalist this neatly explains both the Democrats' victory in 2008 and defeat in 2010. When the Democrats win, it's because the moderate voters are "uncomfortable" with the evangelical Christians in the Republican Party. When the Republicans win, it's because those nasty, bitter, mean evangelical Christians and neocons use money, technology, fear and bigotry to lead people around.
In 2002, Cokie Roberts commented on the public suspicion of left wing bias in the news media: "There has been a concerted effort on the part of some conservatives to portray the media as the liberal media because I think that works when you want to raise some money or you want to get people mad, it works." Translation: "The peasants don't think we're biased because they can see it for themselves. They think we're biased because those wicked conservatives accuse us of it to get the dumb peasants' money and their votes." The trouble with that argument is how to convince people who consider themselves capable of independent judgement that they're incompetent to draw their own conclusions. That's a great way to lose their trust, which the MSM has done so effectively.
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Medley