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Strange but True: Rick Santorum Channels Steve Jobs
(Please see updates below.) Arguably the most influential TV commercial ever is the minute-long "1984" video that introduced the Macintosh computer during the third quarter of the Raiders-Redskins...
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The Santorum/Apple Ad: Update
It looks as if Rick Santorum will come up short tonight, despite the panache of his Apple-themed ad. Readers have written in to emend and expand on my earlier dispatch on that ad.1) Several people have...
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Google's New Rules Don't Frighten Me
If you've been using any Google product these past few weeks -- Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Docs, Maps, even plain search -- you've seen the warnings: big privacy changes ahead! Here is how the warning...
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Demography as Destiny: The GOP's Self-Inflicted Wound
I mentioned yesterday the "demographic suicide" analysis of the modern Republican predicament: that in its increasing fealty to an older-white-male-Southern base, the party has moved itself toward...
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NPR Tackles 'False Equivalence'
Through the years I've written about the media's difficulties with "false equivalence" -- the strong tendency to give equal time and credence to varying "sides" of a story, even if one of the sides is...
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Iran Reading List: Bluff, Deterrence, and the Madman Theory
As the Netanyahu visit impends and the bomb-Iran drumbeat continues, here is another item worth considering. (Apart from Robert Wright's latest dispatch, with its reminder that a "clean" and "surgical"...
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The Atlantic's Interview with Obama on Iran
Congratulations to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg for his extensive interview with President Obama about Iran and Israel, on the eve of the Netanyahu visit and AIPAC meeting. Congrats to him too for...
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'I Killed the Internet': Click by Click, the Internet Grows, or Dies
Last month I mentioned essays by Dave Winer, John Battelle, and Keith Woolcock on why the growth of "social media" threatened the survival of the original social/individual/international medium known...
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Comparing Administrations: Clinton vs. Obama
In response to my "chessmater or pawn?" article about Barack Obama, some readers suggested that Team Clinton, from the 1990s, was flat-out more competent than today's Team Obama. Reader Mark Hall...
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Iran Drumbeat Watch: AIPAC Edition
1) 'Too much loose talk.' Good for President Obama for saying this during his speech yesterday at AIPAC:Already, there is too much loose talk of war. Over the last few weeks, such talk has only...
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AIPAC / Obama / Bomb-Iran Update
1) The 'oddity' of the AIPAC setting. After my dispatch yesterday on Barack Obama's appearance at AIPAC, I have received several notes in the following vein:[quoting me] "I can't think of another...
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America, Israel, AIPAC, and Iran: the 'Client State' Factor
Lots of incoming traffic on AIPAC and Obama; plus lots in the queue on other topics, from the TSA to the Chinese economy to primary-election rhetoric to the F-35 to Australian beer. For the moment,...
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Why We Love the Chinese State Media, Chap. 12,853
From the English version of the People's Daily online: "Two sessions" refers to the annual "twin meetings" or "dual meetings" of the National People's Congress and the People's Political Consultative...
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The Chinese State Media Celebrate International Women's Day
Yesterday I mentioned the hard-hitting coverage from the Onion People's Daily about the all-important lianghui, or "dual meetings," of the National People's Congress and the People's Political...
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More on Chinese Women, Obama's Win List, TSA
Followup on several recent items:1) Last night I mentioned the juxtaposition of International Women's Day with People's Daily tame-cheesecake coverage of China's big political confabs going on now. A...
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False Equivalence Comes Home to Roost
I awoke this morning (Friday a.m., on the other side of the Pacific) to find a slew of emails asking whether I had slacked off in proselytizing about my anti-"false equivalence" campaign to other...
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Iran Drumbeat: Doomsday Clock, Chickenhawks, Chessmaster?
I am on the road and out of range a fair amount of the time, so let me try to catch up today on a number of emerging developments. Of greatest importance: the drumbeat for an attack on Iran.1) Pictures...
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False Equivalence and the Filibuster: Now It's the Democrats' Turn
Since 2007, Senate Democrats have ground and gritted their teeth as Sen. Mitch McConnell's Republican minority has routinized the filibuster-threat to block just about any nomination or proposal. What...
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I Know I Shouldn't Just Embed Cartoons From the New Yorker...
... since there, as elsewhere, you should Subscribe! So instead I'll include the proper link, with a tiny little not-quite-readable thumbnail below.This is worth seeing. Incentive, apart from a laugh:...
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And I Also Shouldn't Just Embed Charts from 'Spy'
On the other hand, you can't Subscribe!™ to that magazine any more, since it has lamentably been out of business since the Clinton era. (Previously in the "I know I shouldn't..." category.) Thus I will...
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