Hiding from Fame, Setting Gerry up for Another Big Fall

The AP asks, "What's in J.D. Salinger's Safe?"

I'm deeply disturbed by the question because I fear it can only lead to Geraldo Rivera, a work crew, and a live TV special. On the plus side, the schadenfreude would be even sweeter this second time around.

(Unrelated question: Am I really one of the very few who is annoyed by Catcher in the Rye? It's one of those books that everyone is expected to fawn over, but I just can't do it. One of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century? Really? According to Time Magazine, yes. According to me, no freakin' way. Portnoy's Complaint (also on Time's list, sadly) leaves me similarly weary: the constant bitching and moaning of the two books' narrators is too much for me to overcome.)

Corporations and Free Speech

So the Supreme Court ruled moments ago that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals. Do other basic rights apply to corporations, as well? For instance, will corporate officers be able to take the Fifth if they feel their testimony might incriminate the companies they represent? And what about Second Amendment rights? How much more exciting and interesting will the Microsoft vs. Google and the Google vs. Apple wars become if those companies can now keep and bear arms?


UPDATE: A friend responds to this by observing that, "Conservatives will be happy with the 2nd amendment rights just as long as Microsoft and Apple can't get gay-married."

And Another One Bites the Dust

In today's mail, I got the last-ever Washington Post National Weekly Edition. Until now, this had been the only reliable means for those of us who live more than appx 150 miles outside of DC to subscribe to a true paper and ink edition of the Post. But it's rough out there for newspapers, and the Post decided that it had to ax the Weekly Edition. It's too bad. It's also becoming routine, which is worrying (or it ought to be).

Of course, I still have the Raleigh News & Observer, which is a good paper. When there is a long list of state politicians and administrators who hate and fear a newspaper as there is in the N&O's case, you know that paper is doing something right. Need confirmation? Try asking former NC House Speaker Jim Black (you'll first have to get on his prison visitor list) or former governor Mike Easley (you'll have to catch him when he's not with his attorney talking about the federal and state investigations into his alleged abuses of power, illegal fundraising, and misuse of public funds) or the former director of the NC mental health division & the former directors of the state's mental hospitals. Unfortunately, the McClatchey papers are in far worse shape than is the Post, and have gone through several rounds of layoffs since I moved here.

Additionally, I still have the Washington Post website, but despite how much I appreciate the WaPo online and how much time I spend on it throughout the day, I've realized in the last couple of years that it's not the same. The physical paper is much easier to navigate: every week I'd find stories in the Weekly Edition that I'd completely missed online.

(On the upside, I'm thankful that the WaPo mgmt didn't decide first to try something shockingly desperate and misguided, such as, oh, I don't know, maybe restructuring the org chart so that section editors would now report to the sales managers, violating one of the biggest church/state separations in journalism.)

Efforts to Reach Christ Today Were Unsuccessful

Indeed.

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/12/post_256.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091202/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_jesus_jury_duty

It's a Plan, Anyway

Ah, don't get so frustrated. It's not like your company-organization-bureau-squad-gang-crew-syndicate-government is any more screwed up than most others. No, really...

Maj. Colvin: "I'm guessing that you have some thoughts on where we should go from here."

Sgt. Carver: "Well sir, we were thinking of a modified zebra operation. Jump-outs rotating from sector to sector combined with a zero-tolerance approach. We detail a couple men from each sector, build a flex squad, double up on the head-knocking and corner clearing."

Maj. Colvin: "More of the same, you mean?"

Lt. Mello: "But better."

Recovering From Bad Decisions

Lenovo is going to buy back the mobile phone business that it sold last year to a group of Hong Kong investors. Their reason for such a quick 180° change in business plans? The article quotes a statement from the company's CEO indicating that "the switch in strategy stemmed from 'changed market conditions' in which PC and mobile-phone technologies are converging."

Thanks for the hot tip, boys.

Either Lenovo's PR folks need to learn to lie better (that's assuming they're simply unable to issue honest statements along the lines of "we fucked up last year") or the company is more blind to technology trends than my long dead grandmother.

The Washington Post and Personal Affairs

I usually have a problem with the news media airing most people's personal problems, especially those stories that involve family tensions. Like it or not, I expect that crap from the celebrity shows and magazines, but not from respectable newspapers.

In the case of politicians, the argument is made that knowledge of a person's problems can help voters make determinations based upon issues of (perceived) character. Unless the story involves abuse of power or some criminal activity or something of the like, I think that argument is a load of crap: most such stories are published to satisfy people's voyeuristic instincts or to either put forward or buttress some overarching belief (true or not) about the person in question. The support for reporting on personal problems of pop culture celebrities is even shakier and is nearly non-existent in the case of near- or former-celebrities, especially those in such position through no effort (or fault) of their own.

The story in the Washington Post about Rod Langway's estrangement from his daughter made for an interesting reading exercise: I knew it was none of my business and I was upset that the Post would feel comfortable publishing such a story involving people mostly outside of the public eye (yes, Langway is still a minor sports legend and still makes the rare public appearance) and where the emotions are still raw and far from being resolved. And yet, despite all that, I kept reading all the way to the end, fascinated, which is more than likely all the justification needed by the Post for printing the story.

I don't know Langway or his family. Really, I shouldn't care about them or their personal struggles. And yet, I now find myself having a very poor opinion of the daughter and her mother for being so willing to air their family's dirty laundry in such a manner, which, by the way, strikes me as merely another attempt to ambush Langway and then cry about his surprised and resentful reaction afterwards. The mother and daughter seem to define dysfunction.

I also have sympathy for Langway for what appears to be his (by contrast, at least) reticence on the matter, especially regarding whatever incident(s) lead to the dissolution of the relationship in the first place and his seeming concern for how that story will impact his daughter. I don't know these people and shouldn't really care, but here I am forming some strong opinions about them based upon a newspaper story relating a single troubling aspect of their lives. Such a strange phenomenon, both from the perspective of a reader learning about someone else's personal business as well as from the viewpoint of the average Joan who decides that she wants everyone to know about a personal and painful (and on-going!) affair.

At the other end of the trashy celebrity news spectrum, we have this Washington Post profile on Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the Virginia couple who somehow gained entrance to the state dinner at the White House and greeted President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Singh. This story is amusingly full of unseemly details about the couple: much of the information is public but there is enough personal to make it an exceedingly uncomfortable news story for the couple and their family and friends. You've got family squabbles, financial difficulties, untruthful self-promotion, and charges of bad character. Excluding the information regarding possible fraud, this is a very personal story that normally would serve to do little beyond embarrass the subjects and instill readers with a bit of Schadenfreude. But the difference between this story and the Langway article is simply that the Salahis are celebrity chasers and celebrity wannabes. They're starfuckers. And appropriately enough, their latest stunt (but by no means their most outrageous: read the article's account of Tariq's supposed children's charity fundraisers) has resulted in the celebrity they've wanted while also ensuring that they've screwed themselves quite royally. Really, it couldn't possibly happen to a more deserving couple. In contrast to the Langway story, there are no feelings of guilt or embarrassment associated with reading this story of another family's troubles, though those problems have been, to varying degrees, self-induced.

The 100 Greatest Quotes from "The Wire"

Put together by hh for Pajiba



"Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?!"

World Party (private revolution)

iPod's Shuffle Songs mode reminded me earlier this week how much I used to love this band. As it turns out, I still do.

And God Said...

You're a Little Late, Guys

I'd happily return the rest of the meat to the store, but I haven't been able to put more than 25 feet between myself and the bathroom for the last month.

Seriously, you're telling us about this now, four to six weeks after the beef's sell by day? Why?!