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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Thursday, August 11, 2005

The NARAL No No 

...there are a couple of simple rules in the world of political ads that one would thing would be pretty obvious, but apparently aren't. First of all, if you are going to produce and air an ad that Factcheck.org is subsequently going to declare as being deceptive, be sure to do it when there are so many deceptive political ads flying around like rabid bats that your little effort gets lost in crowd noise. Second of all, if that's not the sort of environment in which you're operating, don't let fly with an advertising campaign that might somehow create sympathy for the opponent because of loud objections to your ads in the absence of all the other ad noise. Third of all, if you're going to fling yourself out into that dismal political rodeo with ads that you are pretty confident are going to piss some folks off, cinch down your hat, grab tight on the reins, and get ready to hang on for the full 8-second ride. Somehow, beyond all expectation and well outside the acceptable odds for even the most hopelessly addled gambling junkie, the National Abortion Rights Action League blew right through all these simple rules and flew an ad that they have now, barely days (more like hours) into their media campaign against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, decided to pull because of the 'misconstruing' of the message they were trying to get out...

...although John Roberts isn't nearly the sort of partisan nightmare that a Bork or a Scalia or a Thomas clearly represented, there are plenty of questions about him. He has been constructed to be sufficiently an enigma that even some conservatives have become nervous as his paper trail becomes more visible, and that nervousness over the strength of his conservatism on the part of the right coupled with absolute objections on the part of the left could have eventually made him damaged goods in the eyes of politically-charged Senators, especially Democrats who are trying to regain their footing and anxious to get at least some branch of the Federal government back in their hands. NARAL's initial effort, to say the least, has been unhelpful for those looking to stop Robert's confirmation. They made him a sympathetic figure with ads that, in the absence of other action that might share the media spotlight, came across - intentionally or not - as a cheap shot that only engaged the barest flirtation with reality. Compounding the error with an abrupt withdrawal of the ads in question does harm to legitimate efforts to question Roberts' suitability for the job, and creates the risk of having harmed NARAL's interest in being a player on the national stage in discussions revolving around abortion...

...it's hard to escape the feeling that NARAL screwed up and did so strictly by the numbers. Even if everything that they said was true, it won't look like it anymore because they stepped away from the ads today. It doesn't really matter whether the specific charge is true or not, it only matters that they have created an impression of themselves, their themes, and their talking points that is going to be profoundly unhelpful in the debates and fights that confront abortion rights supporters as we move forward. With friends like these, who needs...well, you know the rest....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:43 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Never Kid A Kidder 

...this has got to be a scam, right? Some sort of joke? Otherwise, I am being led to believe that a group bubbling over with anti-gay sentiment is now allied with gay-rights liberals in the...ahem...discussion over the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts. The conservative (politely put) group Public Advocate of the United States says they are going to pull their support for Roberts because of his role in the defeat of a Colorado anti-gay initiative. Whether this is the first crack in the previously stout solid wall of conservative support for Roberts or some bizarre sort of juke-move to try to make liberals loosen their grip on the ol' advise-and-consent pigskin in hopes of a fumble, on it's face it's good for a bit of a belly laugh. It's not quite the same thing as James Dobson coming out and calling Roberts a liberal in wolf's clothing, but it does - again if true - shine a perfectly bright light on the little white lie denying the hope for activist conservative judges that the right has been allowed to get away with for all these years...

...but who are these people? Are they so lost in their own sense of self-importance that the religious right is so sinfully burdened with these days that they think that there's no possibility of repercussions over such actions. This defection from the happy sunny righty talk is - if the real deal - instructive as to just how far the Republican party has come from the firm base of Reaganism. I'm certainly not going to say anything to them, but this is in fact how the Democratic party fell apart, when their original 'big tent' of a variety of relatively single-issue partisans began to fight over those single issues and effectively drove a bulldozer through the middle of that big tent without thinking to lift the tent flaps. Maybe we're seeing the first cracks in that vast imposing dam holding in check the competing interests of the Republican Party, and maybe we're seeing a snit by some winger splinter group with more talk than either influence or common sense. Until we can figure that out, however, it's kind of fun to see that all the careful vetting and thought that must have gone into the selection of the perfect stealth candidate does, as a matter of fact, demonstrate that Gee Dub and his Bush Monkeys aren't the infallible juggernaut that they would like to have you believe. Their B-2 boy is pinging on all sorts of radars, including some that they thought were safe, and this defection just simply can't be welcome news down in those secret bunkers underneath the Crawford ranch house where Gee Dub and Karl Rove spend these desperate vacation nights trying to figure out how to recapture the glory days of those towering 52% approval ratings. So, even though this "Public Advocate" group may not pan out to be meaningful opposition, it's still a fun day when you get to watch the other side start fighting amongst themselves for a change...
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:15 PM 0 comments

Monday, August 08, 2005

The Last Word 

...as the sun slides down behind the pine trees outside my west-facing window here in my redoubt at Grumpy Central, I fully understand that whatever talk that there was going to be about the passing of Peter Jennings is going to fade quickly away just like the yellow-orange in the sky over the Cascade crest. I've thought about this all day because I've had the opportunity to read a variety of tributes and anti-tributes to Jennings, so I think that - given my perspective of over 40 years of watching the evening news - I will give Jonathan Alter the chore of representing my version of the last word on what Peter Jennings represented. Alter captures what was important about Peter Jennings more capably than I ever could...which is why he does this for a living and I do it for free, I surmise, but there it is...

...there was a time when the evening news anchors were people we turned to and trusted to tell us what was happening in the world around us. Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather were our last connection to that sense of trust, the carriers of the televised flame first kindled by Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite back in my youth in the 60's, and Brokaw and Rather suffered some slippage into televised tabloidism in their later years. Jennings, in his early years, was the pretty boy of the bunch until he left the anchor chair and went off on a lengthy hiatus into the foreign correspondence world. It was a looks thing, though and he never wavered from his desire to get journalism right, in other words displaying a different kind of glib pretty-boyism than the sort that one sees today with Brian Williams that engenders a talk-show celebrity of its own. His efforts to present serious journalism, especially of the international variety that Alter cites, stands him in good stead with Chet and David and Walter and the ideas of journalism as an effort to provide people with what really was a fair and balanced presentation of what is happening in their world. There never could be a Chet or a David or a Walter or a Peter on Fox News, and there may never again be one on the other major networks either. Distrust of the media and a willingness to see practitioners as flacks who have given up on redeeming their responsibilities is rife on both sides of the political fulcrum - and especially so on the left where it sometimes seems that mainstream media has abandoned its principles for the easy accomodation of get-along/go-along with the Bush Administration for the cheap sake of access. Even if not true in all cases, it is the inevitable Tar Baby for news anchors, no matter who they are. It may be some time before we realize what we have actually lost with the passing of Peter Jennings. As Alter says at the end of his Newsweek article:

The rap on Peter Jennings was that he took himself too seriously. I’m glad he did, because that meant that he took us seriously, too, and our need to know about things that are distant and complicated but a lot more important than most of what passes for news.
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:31 PM 0 comments

Does He Even FIT in a Squad Car?? 

...evil-doers, bad guys, and dirty rotten scoundrels in Bedford County, Virginia, are one step closer to being in for the shock of their lives, and on-line pedophile wanna-be's cruising the chat-rooms for an easy mark will want to give immediate consideration to turning their lives around: Shaq is heading your way...

...just imagine a perp's deep personal feelings when, after running into a dark blind alley to elude the cops, he turns to see - looming out of the police cruiser headlights - seven feet one and a half inches and three hundred twenty five pounds of Bedford County Sheriff's Deputy with that peculiar grim little smile way up there on his face and that toy-looking shotgun almost invisible in the grip of those two huge hands; say 'hello' to sphincter control loss. His first assignment all by itself offers some tremendous deterrent opportunities. Take Shaq and a video camera along to bust some child predator hunkered over a computer in his basement; let Shaq break down the door and take physical custody of the sleezeball, "helping" him get those wrists a little closer behind the back so the cuffs will fit just...a...little...tighter. The widely broadcast screams of horror alone would probably cause a number of wanna-be's to reach for the phone to cancel their ISP accounts...

...beats me how they're gonna fit this Big Dog into a regular Crown Vic cruiser, but it certainly will be entertaining if the show "Cops" ever decides to do a piece on Deputy O'Neil...
Posted by: Jack K. / 7:09 AM 0 comments

So It Wasn't Even THAT Good?! 

...ok, so you'll have to figure this one out on your own. The Washington Post has issued an apology

...and what did she think of the book? A "mass of lazy, unrefined writing." So is that the divorce talking, or was she actually being over one of it's book reviewers not revealing a personal connection with an author she reviewed. It seems that Marianne Wiggins didn't reveal that her ex-husband and reviewed author John Irving were friends and she had socialized with Irving...nice to a social acquaintence? Rules are Rules, but beats the heck out of me where they lead me in this case...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:45 AM 0 comments

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