Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Last year, Anil Dash called Baseline "by far the best business technology magazine in existence." I think it's gotten better since then, and some are calling the new cover story on killer software at the Panama Cancer Institute, written by Debbie Gage and John McCormick, its best article yet. 5:59:12 PM    comment []

Trickle-down fiction writing: News & Record columnist Charles Davenport Jr. notes today (unposted) that a previous column included a quote made up by disgraced USA Today reporter Jack Kelley. No word from Davenport Jr. on whether news that his argument relied on a falsehood led him to reconsider the argument to any degree. 12:47:17 PM    comment []

Matt Gross calls out both the Washington Post and his former boss, Howard Dean, for arguing against books and articles by erstwhile insiders. "Presidential politics is by its very nature of historical importance, and the decision-making process that leads to action or inaction by an administration (or a campaign) is not the equivalent of a private conversation between individuals. To suggest that it is-- or that it should be treated so-- is to allow that one's allegiance to a man is higher than one's allegiance to the public that that man serves." 12:16:07 PM    comment []

A good conversation about the backlash Thomas Frank describes in Harper's is taking place in the comments attached to this post. There is something inherently condescending in saying that people don't understand what they are voting for, that if they only read Harper's they would switch from the plutocrats to the Democrats. So why do people who get screwed by corporate elites keep voting for their agenda? One reader suggests that the DLC Democrats obey the same corporate masters -- but another points out that the DLC emerged as a response to this trend. Race, religiosity, etc. are cited. I'm still looking for more on the "how" of the backlash -- and for ways it can be reversed. How can the Democrats become the party of the people again? 8:48:33 AM    comment []

Thomas Frank on David Brooks, from the April ’04 Harper’s, cites the “contradictions, tautologies, and huge, honking errors” in the Red State/Blue State meme. Most damning are the straight-up factual errors that undermine Brooks' assertions about the common-manliness of the GOP: Brooks: “Upscale areas everywhere” voted for Gore in 2000. Frank: “As a blanket statement about the rich, this is not even close to correct. Bush was in fact the hands-down choice of corporate America…(Brooks) gives Chicago’s North Shore as an example…Lake Forest, the definitive and richest North Shore burb, chose the Republican, as it almost always does, by a whopping 70 percent. Winnetka and Kenilworth, the other North Shore suburbs know for their upscaliness, went for Bush by 59 and 64 percent, respectively.” Frank then cites other “upscale areas” across the country that voted for Bush. Re Brooks’ statement that “we” blue-staters “don’t know what soy beans look like when they’re growing in a field,” Frank says, “the top three soybean producers-- Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota – were in fact Blue states.” Frank also nails Brooks on spin. Brooks says “We don’t know who Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are….what James Dobson says on his radio program”; Frank notes that they are right-wing ideologues, not voices of the common man. Buy the magazine. 8:23:19 AM    comment []