Thursday, August 26, 2004

Muller v. Malkin on NC talk radio, 101.1 FM.  Brad Krantz and Britt Whitmire provided a smart, serious forum. Really. They didn't overwhelm us with commercial breaks, they let both guests speak at length...and incredibly after all this time and verbiage, they helped move this whole conversation toward a useful end by considering the issues Malkin claims she wants to raise, then tying that discussion back to the book she actually wrote, "In Defense of Internment." The essential moment came after almost an hour of the usual back and forth, in which Malkin made the unassailable point that there were legitimate security concerns around Japanese espionage in WWII, then failed to make any serious case that the actual internment in camps of tens of thousands of US citizens, kids, old people, etc. was justified by those concerns, with Muller providing detail to buttress the case that racism and hysteria drove the internment Malkin purports to defend. At about 9:50, Brad asked Muller if authorities today are handcuffed in dealing with stateless terror threats because of our collective memory of what happened in WWII. That's the point Malkin says she wants to make. Muller, who says he favors some form of profiling for Arab visitors to the US: That's an important debate to have today, but you don't do it by smearing an entire group of people who were wronged in the first place.  You can defend a president's right to executive privilege without writing a book called "In Defense of Watergate."  Malkin couldn't write a book called "In Defense of Reasonable Pragmatic Security Measures" because the book won't sell if you write it in a careful, scholarly way. Krantz: "He's saying you’re a marketing genius, Michelle." Muller and Malkin greeted each other cooly at the beginning of the show. She sounds exhausted. But at the end she graciously urged listeners to go to Muller's website, and he sent people to hers, too. Britt: Wow, is that the best thing we’ve had on our show so far? Brad. "No." Transcribed notes here, yesterday's review here. 12:04:22 PM    comment []

WSJ: Meet the GOP convention bloggers. 10:29:33 AM    comment []

Greensboro City Councilman Don Vaughan is coming to the conference on Saturday. Did I mention we're having a conference on Saturday? 8:03:40 AM    comment []

Dave Winer: "Fact: Kerry overplayed his Vietnam experience and Karl Rove is making him pay for it.... ...the Swift-Boat-Guys-Who-Lie is George Bush, President of the United States. I'm not stupid, and I wasn't born yesterday. It's so obvious. Let's get that fact on the table and out in the open and get on with it. What a crock that he seems to think we don't know. Amazing." 7:58:01 AM    comment []

The Erskine Bowles campaign weblog says outside money could skew the North Carolina Senate race. "The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has booked an unprecedented $5.3 million in advertisements to try and defeat Erskine Bowles in November. We know how the NRSC works. In 2002, they ran ads against Erskine Bowles that were so misleading, several television stations pulled them off the air." 7:55:06 AM    comment []

Mr. Sun is dealing with the death of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in his own special way. I think it's bargaining....   ...while Monkeytime tells us good things about Julia Child that didn't make her obit. 7:53:00 AM    comment []

San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor writes at his weblog: "If I were in Greensboro, North Carolina, this Saturday I'd attend this gathering of bloggers."   In Dan's absence, I suggest that everyone spend some time with his book, We the Media, which you can read online or buy as a hardback. 7:51:09 AM    comment []

John Robinson, editor of the News & Record, has a weblog. This is most excellent. JR: "This is the first method that encourages dialogue back and forth between me and our readers in full view of anyone visiting the site." 7:45:43 AM    comment []