New Media Alliance - Warner Todd Huston

-By Warner Todd Huston

In 1999 a handsome, earnest young man named Ahmad Batebi defied Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran. His photo caused an instant sensation and became a symbol of the flower of Iran standing ready to oppose the oppression of the Iranian religious regime.

Batebi, 31, became an icon after he was photographed as a handsome young student waving the blood-stained shirt of a fallen demonstrator during mass protests against Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, and clerical rule in 1999. With his long hair and bandana, he embodied the new spirit of defiance in Iran.

Naturally, he was apprehended by his oppressors and imprisoned under a 15-year prison sentence. While in prison he was beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling for hours and was constantly threatened with execution. It was demanded that he disclaim his treasonous actions on Iranian TV. Batebi refused.

The price of his defiance can be seen in the deep scars on his shoulders and arms — and other parts of his body hidden by clothing. In prison he was repeatedly blindfolded, beaten and deprived of sleep. Pulling up the sleeves of his T-shirt, he said: “I don’t know what they used to cut me, but they put salt in the wounds to stop me falling asleep.”

Fortunately, Ahmad Batebi found help among the Kurdish underground in Iran and he was able to make his escape to find refuge in America. It is reported that his pursuers chased him from Iran all the way into Iraq and issued the threat that they would eventually get him.

Ahmad Batebi was lucky to have escaped. Thousands of his compatriots have not been so lucky. They languish in prisons deep in Iran being tortured and murdered daily by order of the Ayatollahs.

These are the people Barack Obama imagines he can charm into becoming civilized humans.

Beyond a doubt Barack Obama can’t wait to get into the White House so that he can put into action his kindler, gentler foreign policy ideas. As he said in the debates earlier this year, he’d talk to tin pot dictators, murderers and oppressors “without preconditions.” He said this, of course, to the shock of anyone even a little familiar with foreign policy, not to mention human nature.

Apparently, Barack Obama imagines that the glint in his eye and the flash of his pearly whites is quite enough to send any terrorist leader to his nearest Mosque to supplicate himself in abject apology for ever defying the will of the Obamessiah.

Now there was once another fellow in history that felt this way – though with Hitler and his Nazis instead of the Islamofascists we face today. His name was Neville Chamberlain and he became the most disgraced Prime Minister that Britain ever had… and that’s really saying something. The only thing this foolish little man is remembered for is what he told the world after he got back from a visit with Hitler. At Heston Airport Chamberlain addressed the gathered throngs of Britains eager to see what he had found in Germany. He told them, “I believe it is peace in our time.” That was in September of 1938. Hitler Invaded Poland only one year later in 1939 and WWII began.

Neville Chamberlain’s “peace” cost the world around 72 million lives.

What will Barack Obama’s arrogance and naiveté cost us?

(Photo credit: www.iranalmanac.com)

-By Warner Todd Huston

Someone peed in Lance Ulanoff’s pocket protector and it must have been a Republican, because Ulanoff, one of PCMag.com’s chief geeks, unloaded on the “tech illiterate” John McCain in a July 16th article, insisting that McCain isn’t “tech savvy enough to run this country.”

Ulanoff is filled with all sorts of assumptions and with faux indignation that John McCain dares run for president even though he has admitted that he doesn’t know a whole lot about computers. Naturally, Ulanoff begins with the left’s favorite talking point du jour, that McCain is too old.

John McCain, the oldest presidential candidate this nation has ever had, has now proven, by his own admission, that he’s not tech savvy enough to run this country.

So, what is uber geek Ulanoff’s reason that McCain isn’t able to lead this country in a “tech” age? Why its because McCain says he can’t use a computer that’s why. Oh, and he’s old… let’s not forget that

McCain recently admitted to The New York Times that he currently has other people go online to get him the information he needs, adding that he’s working on mastering the technology. According to the Times, McCain uses “his wife, and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online.” McCain actually said that these people “go on for me.”

Then the clincher from McCain: “I don’t e-mail. I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail.”

Well, just before writing this, I looked the Constitution over to see where the e-mail requirement was. Funny thing is, I couldn’t find it.

Ulanoff’s main reason seems to be that a president that can’t even operate a computer can’t understand issues of Net neutraility and Internet policy and, therefore, won’t have enough knowledge to make decisions in those areas. This, of course, assumes that a president knows all of human knowledge once he ascends to office and doesn’t need aides and advisors to help him learn about and make decisions on important issues while in office.

Oh, and don’t forget, McCain’s too old.

But, let’s face reality about computers and the president, any president. Thanks to the over use of the attack dogs called “special prosecutors,” and the overweening interference of the Executive Branch by Congress, no president is even going to bother using e-mail and computers very much.

Last May, Bush even claimed that he looks forward to using e-mail to contact friends and family again after he leaves office. In a report on the president’s remarks, a New York Times blog reported that “Mr. Bush stopped e-mailing when he entered the White House, citing security worries, and the Oval Office does not have a computer in it.”

So, here we have in the presidency of the United States of America a job where using a computer is not only unnecessary, it is specifically eschewed because of the danger it represents.

So, if McCain won’t even have to use a computer while in office (and that is because the left would use it to attack him), then why is it such a requirement that he be “tech savvy"?

If Ulanoff wants a president to use a computer, he might want to get Congress to stop looking for every excuse it can find to “get” the president so that a future president might find it safe enough while in office to use one in this “tech savvy” world in which we live.

So, let me say this to Ulanoff. You are too “politically illiterate” to assess if McCain is suitable enough to fill the oval office. Your opinion is uninformed and unimportant. But thanks for stopping by. McCain might be less than computer literate, but that skill is not in any way a requirement to be a qualified candidate for president of the US.

Oh, but McCain’s old, too. Did Ulanoff mention that?

(Photo credit: www.gamesandmobile.com)

-By Warner Todd Huston

Just as I finish a piece laughing at DailyKos for claiming that it is conservatives that feel they have to “create their own alternate reality” because of their “rigid ideology,” I find a story out of The Austin American-Statesman where the DailyKos forced that paper to pull a story that had a mildly satirical take on last weekend’s Netroots Nation conference in Texas. Apparently, the DailyKos folks didn’t like The Austin American-Statesman’s “reality” so the Kossacks flooded the paper with their insistence on creating a new one.

The original article by the Statesman’s Patrick Beach knocked the nutrooters for the so-called “surprise” Gore visit, said it turned into a “faint-in,” and that their general feeling was “terribly self-confirming,” among other snippy comments… fun, but snippy. The general tone of the piece was that of amusement at how seriously the nutrooters took themselves. And, even more galling to said nutrooters, this story was the front page editorial of Sunday’s edition. (Original, Google cached version of Beach’s piece.)

This did not sit well with the nutrooters in question.

So, in the true spirit of “tolerance,” respect for “freedom of speech,” and an interest in a “free press,” the denizens of the DailyKos whipped themselves up into a frenzy of complaints. The din was so loud that the compliant folks at the Austin American-Statesman acquiesced to the demands for retribution. The Statesman pulled the piece from their website and made abject, groveling apologies to the folks at the DailyKos.

Instead of Patrick Beach’s mildly amusing editorial, we get this message:

Editor’s note: Netroots Nation story

Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.

Our front-page story Sunday about the Netroots Nation convention included doses of irony and exaggeration. It made assertions (that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might find herself at home politically in Beijing, for example) and characterizations ("marauding liberals” was one) meant to amuse. For many readers, we failed.

In trying for a humorous take on the Netroots phenomenon without labeling it something other than a straightforward news story, we compromised our standards.

– Fred Zipp, editor

Oopsie. Looks like the Statesman didn’t want their customer base upset? But, kudos to the Statesman for realizing that only far left, extremists patronize their rag and for bowing to their customers’ desires, just the same.

But, there is more to the story. Not only were the whirling Dervishes of the DailyKos responsible for quashing the free media, but another member of that media was the one that started the newspaper burning efforts.

Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher, billed as “America’s oldest journal covering the newspaper industry,” decided to launch a nutrooter attack on the Austin American-Statesman.

Well, I thought I would perform a public service and let some of the convention attendees know about all this – few are fans of dead-tree media – so I posted a summary on my diary at DailyKos (the popular blog that founded Netroots). The “Kossacks” as they are known could do what they wanted with it, if anything. Within a few minutes, so many people were reading and recommending my post that it shot to near the top of the DailyKos “diaries” for the day. It also got picked up at some other popular blogs.

Many commenters promised to write letters to the editor. Some of them were Austinites who claimed they knew people at the local paper and might actually work their magic on them.

Well, so much for professional courtesy! Anything goes when the hard-left ideological line has been crossed to the right, eh?

But, now, remember, folks. The left is far more “civilized,” far more “tolerant,” and much nicer than those mean ol’ conservatives. Remember?

Here is Beach’s full article for posterity because that cached page probably won’t stay available forever.

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Name-dropping Al Gore and his call for a switch to clean, renewable energy within 10 years was enough to pull whoops of approval from the 2,000 or 3,000 marauding liberals gathered for Netroots Nation at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday morning.

So when the former vice president and Nobel Prize co-winner made a surprise – and cleverly scripted – appearance during U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s talk, it looked like the conference might turn into a faint-in.

Talk that Pelosi (who is arguably so left-leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing) would have a Very Special Guest had been buzzing about the conference of liberal bloggers, pols and media types since it began Thursday (it concludes today). But it wasn’t clear to attendees that something was afoot until a schedule change handed out Saturday morning indicated the speaker’s talk would last 45 minutes longer than previously indicated.

Not that Gore’s appearance was necessary to whip up the troops.

From the beginning, it was clear these people were convinced the electoral map would be repainted with a brush sopping with blue paint come November.

The believers will tell you it’s morning, that they smell the napalm. And it smells like, oh, yes, victory.

It didn’t seem to matter that the conservative and much smaller Defending the American Dream Summit – featuring syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr – was going on in Austin at the same time. That was miles from downtown, so there was little chance for a rumble.

With the current administration’s low approval rating, a charismatic presumptive Democratic nominee and a Republican opponent some in the GOP have been reluctant to even air-kiss, the energy was palpable and, like the political blogosphere, terribly self-confirming.

They went to panels about how the presidential election would be won house by house, block by block. They staged mock media interviews and critiqued themselves, and showed films ("Crawford") and Internet videos ("Harry Potter and Dark Lord Waldemart"). They attended panels on the war, health care, online social networks, volunteer organizing and expanding the networking power of something called an “Internet.”

There was even one panel Friday featuring Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (wearing, as if to galvanize stereotype, what appeared to be Birkenstocks) that was essentially about how the media weren’t liberal enough.

As they say, only in Austin.

Filmmaker Paul Stekler, who teaches film production and politics at the University of Texas, said:"As you have greater democratization (through the use of technology to distribute one’s message), you also have a greater degree of what’s called confirmation bias. We live in a very different and weird world in terms of dissemination of information right now.”

Indeed, you couldn’t find anybody who disagreed that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were “two ignoramuses,” a label hurled by Parag Mehta, the Democratic National Committee’s director of training.

Big names? Got ‘em. There was Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos political blog, who hatched the idea a few years ago to get his like-minded pals together and who, in a Friday lunchtime keynote with Harold Ford Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, seemed amazed at what the notion had unleashed.

“We’re going to keep growing; we’re going to keep pushing for an unapologetic Democratic Party,” Moulitsas said.

Then there was John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel who has made a second career of railing against what he considers right-wing excesses the way recovering alcoholics preach against strong drink.

“I have deep fear of my former tribe, and what they might do particularly in the law,” Dean said, before going on to refer to former Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani as “Richard Nixon on crystal meth.”

It’s plinking bass in a barrel to paint liberals as overly intellectual types incapable of having fun unless reading Noam Chomsky counts, and it sure does for them. And there were a handful of colorful characters, including some men from Cedar Creek who looked like bikers and represented the Warrior Wolf Society, which they described as “a group of pagan warriors with wolf totem spirit,” and a guy in a Bush mask and clothing with prison stripes.

But for the most part, these were serious-minded people, and decorum prevailed.

When a few people had the temerity to shout at Pelosi and Gore, they got shushed as mercilessly as they would have at a Nanci Griffith concert.

The no fun thing? Maybe it’s because, as Democrats, they’re not used to having it.

The incredible imploding presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry were used as textbook examples of what not to do. As political ad man John Rowley put it, he’s been in the business for 15 years and only the last two have been good in terms of the political tide. Still, he said, “We’ve got to get ready for the day when we’re not swimming downstream.”

In other words, what a pendulum does is swing. But technology is power, and the left has been quicker to adopt it. As Gore put it Saturday morning:

“You are at the cutting edge of a new era of history. You will look back many years from now and tell your grandchildren about coming here to Austin, Texas, and about the first two meetings of Netroots Nation, and you will tell them that this was the beginning of an effort that was the start to reclaim the integrity of American democracy.”

That is exactly what Joe Trippi had in mind. It was the one-time Howard Dean campaign aide who saw, perhaps a little too early and a little too enthusiastically, the transformative power of the Web. As he walked from one place to another Friday afternoon, he got stopped every 20 feet or so by people who knew him or at least knew of his ideas. And this is what they had wrought; this is what he had predicted.

“It’s amazing,” Trippi said. “I knew it was going to happen, but I’m still blown away that it happened.”

pbeach@statesman.com; 445-3603

**UPDATE**

The Austin American-Statesman has re-posted the Beach article on the Netroots Nation conference. It is now marked as “commentary,” which it obviously always was.

( H/T kristinn from FreeRepublic.com)

-By Warner Todd Huston

Many of us have taken to calling the media establishment the “MSM,” or “Mainstream Media.” But is that a fair and properly descriptive monicker to bestow upon them? A New York Times Blogger pondered that very question on July 21 in a “The Caucus” blog entry – one that was a barely disguised effort to highlight and advertise the opinion of one Markos Moulitsas of the DailyKos.

Still, regardless of the origin of the question, it is an interesting point to ponder. With the failing of newspapers country wide, with the ever falling audience that the big three TV networks are seeing for their news product, and with the corresponding rise of the Internet as a news source, is the old media still properly to be called “mainstream"? Does it still represent the most common way that America gets its news, thereby deserving of the term “mainstream"?

Katherine Q. Seelye of “The Caucus” Blog quotes Kos laughably to the effect of Kos taking the occasion to flatter himself and his nutrooter compatriots that they are they mainstream.

We, on the other hand, are firmly on the mainstream on just about every major issue facing our country, and our numbers are growing. We aren’t outside the mainstream, we are representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we’re selling.

Hardly. But he should get high points for his comedy stylings.

To prove his wild claim, Kos cites some stats that shows that people admitting to being Republican have fallen in numbers. But this is of recent origin and can hardly be assumed to be a permanent aspect of how Americans see themselves, at least not any more than conservatives can assume they’ve won the debate over ideology because many of today’s issues are followed along, or leaning toward their principles in the rhetoric of the national debate (Abortion, 2nd Amendment, tax policy, etc.).

Still, Kos’ delusional and grandiose assessment aside, the question remains: if the old press is no longer “mainstream,” what are they?

Kos himself offers “traditional media” which I find unsatisfactory for the very reason he finds “MSM” unacceptable. Kos says that calling the old media “MSM” might assume in contrast that Internet news sources are “fringe” sources and that the old media is more mainstream. But his replacement term, that of “traditional media,” does no better at defining terms. After all, if Kos thinks “Mainstream Media” is not a good term because it casts Internet news as outside the ordinary, how does “traditional” fit any better under the same logic? The opposite of traditional is untraditional, it should be pointed out. But, Kos does have a point. If the regular, old fashioned media is no longer the dominant form of news, then shouldn’t we hang them with a name that better fits their lowered status?

There actually are some better terms we could be using. “Left-Wing Media,” or LWM, is a good, derisory one. I’ve already called them “old media” in this piece and that one fits as well and I favor that one, as it happens. Conversely, I already call Internet news the “new media,” so it is a natural fit to call TV and newspapers the “old media.”

Whatever we call them, it should be something that befits their less than supreme status.

And now we can deal with Kos’ last bit of foolishness proving what sort of blinkered guy he really is.

The right wing needs to co-opt or destroy the traditional media because, quite frankly, reality isn’t a friend of conservative ideology. The last thing they need is anyone reporting “the truth". Instead, they need to create their own alternate reality to justify their beliefs. And any bit of reality that doesn’t conform to their rigid conservative ideology is “liberal".

This from the website that attempted to destroy Joe Leiberman because he wasn’t sufficiently “liberal” enough? This from the side of the political aisle that sponsors extremist groups like Media Matters? This from the party that created the Clinton attack machine in the 90s?

This silliness proves that Markos Moulitsas is not only insufferably unable to see past his own hate-filled ideology, he is a man of little ability to grow as a person. He will wallow in his hate unwilling, if not completely unable, to look inside himself, see his foibles and excesses, and make of himself a better person.

The ancients used to say that one must know oneself, that a life unexamined was one not worth living. We call it introspection. But whatever it is, Markos Moulitsas doesn’t seem to possess it. And anyone who blindly marches forward in life never looking inward is a small man, indeed.

(Photo credit: http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com)

-By Warner Todd Huston

That’s it. NPR has declared Ohio a disaster area. Things are so bad. NPR gravely warns, that folks in the Buckeye state can’t even afford to buy meat for their dinner tables anymore. It’s the end of civilization as we know it. Doom and gloom. Oh the humanity. It’s the end of the world as we know it… at least for one Ohio family that NPR found to act as stand in for the rest of the state. To NPR all of Ohio is the Nunez family. And what is NPR’ solution? Government aid, of course.

In a segment of All Things Considered (well, all things but common sense, anyway), NPR gives us Gloria Nunez whose family, we are told, was “built on cars.” NPR gives us all sorts of sobbing, rending of clothes, wearing of sackcloth and gnashing of teeth for the Nunez’, of course. But even NPR can’t hide some of the glaring problems that Gloria and her family have surely brought upon themselves.

In fact, her story sounds like the scene in the old Blues Brothers movie where John Belushi is on his knees pleading with Carrie Fischer to forgive him. There was a flood, he whined, locusts came, it was the end of the world, it REALLY wasn’t his fault, he swore to God. Similarly we get the tale that Gloria Nunez’ car broke down, she can’t find a job, she had a car accident that left her “depressed and disabled, incapable of getting a job.” She is now somehow forced to live on a “$637 Social Security check and $102 in food stamps.” Naturally, none of it is her fault. All the seeds for the common welfare tale are there.

‘I Just Can’t Get A Job’

Nunez, 40, has never worked and has no high school degree. She says a car accident 17 years ago left her depressed and disabled, incapable of getting a job. Instead, she and her daughter, Angelica Hernandez, survive on a $637 Social Security check and $102 in food stamps.

Hernandez received her high school diploma and has had several jobs in recent years. But now, because fewer restaurants and stores are hiring, she says she finds it hard to find a job. Even if she could, she says it’s particularly hard to imagine how she’ll keep it. She says she needs someone to give her a lift just to get to an interview. And with gas prices so high, she’s not sure she could afford to pay someone to drive her to work every day.

There are all sorts of extended family members mentioned in this little tale of woe. Greandmothers, sisters, daughters. But one glaring absence might dawn on the reader. No where in the story is a mention of a Mr. Nunez living with the family and trying to provide for them. No where do we see contemporaneously included in this tale a Father or husband.

There is one tiny little thing tucked into this story, though, that might escape notice. At least it is something that seems to have escaped the notice of too many Americans who sit about expecting some magical employment fairy to float down out of the sky and hand them a $50,000 dollar a year job and who, while they wait, sponge off the rest of us with state aid and Federal benefits.

The only employer within walking distance is a ThyssenKrupp factory that makes diesel engine parts. That facility, which employs 400 people, is shutting down and moving to Illinois next year.

The ThyssenKrupp factory is moving to greener pastures, to greater opportunity, to a better, more lucrative environment.

One must wonder why don’t the Nunez.’ In fact, why aren’t a large number of Americans moving to where the jobs are?

There have been many, many periods in American history when large numbers of Americans have uprooted themselves and moved to where there was a better opportunity to make their mark in life. “Go west young man” was once a rallying cry for an American diaspora. The wagon trains rolled by the thousands at a time when such travel often resulted in death. The dust bowl years saw many of those living in the near west moving to California, the land of milk and honey. After the turn of the century, hundreds of thousands moved from the south to the north when work became plentiful there – especially for America’s southern black population. Even recently, the south began to fill back up as work became more plentiful there. And there were many more eras of internal shifts in population that I didn’t mention here. They all moved when a certain section of the country became stagnant and another offered opportunity.

Today it is the west that once again needs great numbers of Americans to move there and fill jobs. Western states are finding themselves with jobs, but no one to fill them.

So, why aren’t large numbers of Americans moving west? Because they’ve been conditioned to imagine that if they can’t easily find a job where they are at, their government will hand them everything for “free.” They’ve become used to imagining that the state should take care of them instead of imagining that they are responsible for themselves.

These kinds of reports without context or any greater exploration of the situation is the sort of “journalism” that helps drive down morale for America for little real gain. Of course, for NPR the main point is to help achieve bad times, not merely report on them. NPR would rather see Americans lounge about their homes feeling desperate and turning to government for succor. NPR wants to breed dependency, not self-reliance.

And dependency is what we see in Gloria Nunez. She is filled with all sorts of excuses of why her life is so darn hard. The world is out to get her, it appears. But there are jobs a plenty out there. Only, they take some effort on the part of the seeker. The magical employment fairy is going to float down and wave her magic jobs wand neither on Gloria Nunez nor anyone like her.

Americans have many times taken their own lives in their own hands and set out to find a better life. Now days, however, the Gloria Nunez’ of the world seem to imagine that everyone else should come to their aid. America must become again that land of rugged individuals leaning forward into any ill wind that blows to forge ahead and succeed.

Government isn’t the solution. Someone should tell that to Gloria Nunez and NPR.

(Photo credit: NPR.org)