Google thanks Schmidt with $100 million. This generous goodbye gift suggests that Schmidt did not want to leave, that Larry Page and Sergey Brin no longer wanted him as the public face of Google.
Jan 26
Historical fiction
Americas, Culture, United States
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For the sake of a good story, a historian altered a Lincoln document to create a touching story that never happened.As a writer of historical fiction, he excels. As historian, he is banned from the National Archives forever.
Jan 14
ILAR-bashing in Tucson
Americas, assassination, Culture, Internet, political violence, United States
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I love Mike Kinsley’s denunciations of “the false rush to claim balance” in the story of the Tucson assassination story–not the least because he got the idea from me.
In 1984, when I was cub reporter at the New Republic–and Kinsley was the cub editor–I wrote a piece about that reflexive tendency of Washington journalists to denounce “ideologues of the left and right” (ILAR). ILAR-bashing, I argued, was usually the indolent scribe’s substitute for the hard work of passing judgment on the facts.
As Kinsley wrote this week.
The “extremists of the right and left” formula generally appeals to newspaper editorialists and the media because it is balanced. And maybe I’m too ideologically blinkered to see the situation clearly. But it seems — in fact, it seems obvious — that the situation is not balanced. Extremists on the right are more responsible for the poisonous ideological atmosphere than extremists on the left, whoever they may be. And extremists on the left have a lot less influence on nonextremists on the left than extremists on the right have on right-wing moderates. Sure, NPR, despite denials, tilts to the left. But not the way Fox News tilts toward the right. Rachel Maddow is no Glenn Beck.
But–my bias for balance is kicking in–I also think David Von Drehle has a fair point in Time. While the right is far more responsible for the legitimization of violence (and the criminally lax gun laws enable it), it has to be said that there is something “not normal” about some of the left/liberal/progressive reaction. The Guardian’s claim that Jared Loughner was “prone to right-wing rants” seems off-base at best. Juan Williams, the affable martyr to NPR, is prone to right-wing rants. Jared Loughner was more confused than ideological in his rants.
I don’t blame ideologues of the left or right for their prejudices. Anybody who writes online journalism understands the imperative of 1) capturing readers with 160 characters or less; for the sake of 2) generating links to other Web sites; which 3) increase the size of the audience. This ardent pursuit of the beloved reader is an exciting and often useful pastime.
But we should not pretend that what we are doing is a normal act of citizenship that deserves emulation. The media provocations in the wake of the Tucson tragedy–the Daily Kos accusations, the Sarah Palin “blood libel” response–were the the normal behavior of public actors seeking attention. These actions are not what most people regard as citizenship. Most people think of citizenship as paying taxes, voting, and obeying the law, not necessarily in that order.
There’s a difference between media provocation and citizenship. We ideologues of the left and right forfeit credibility if we forget the fact.
Jan 06
The story isn’t Assange’s woes
Americas, human rights, United States
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The story is the coming Gitmo threat assessment. The juicy Vanity Fair story on the fair-haired anarchist lends credence to earlier reports that Assange has U.S. government’s appraisal of which of the 800 Guantanamo detainees were jihadists who might pose a threat to the United States and which weren’t.
These documents, notes Wired, would be revelatory and useful the public in sorting out the nature of the threat that American people actually face. An astonishingly high proportion of the 800 detainess posed no threat whatsoever at the time of their detention. Many if not most of them have been released. Of the less than 200 remain some core would certainly return to planning attacks on U.S. targets if released.
Why can’t the American people be trusted with this information? These documents will likely illuminate the folly of rounding up people indiscriminately and torturing them for those who still defend those practice AND they would also highlight those jihadists who truly do pose a threat to the people of the United States.
But why talk policy when we can dish about Julian on the jump?
Jan 05
Does greed corrupt Google search quality?
Americas, Internet, United States
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Three rants about the decline for Google search quality highlight a phenomenon the better minds of Mountain View can’t afford to ignore, says culture blogger Anil Dash. Or can they? Continue reading »
Dec 06
Google fails to appease China
Americas, Asia, China, Internet, United States
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Can Google do business ethically in China?
The Wikileaks documents released in the past few days revive that question, first posed in 2006 when the search engine entered China, by revealing the hardball tactics that Beijing’s communists use to bring Mountain View’s capitalists to heel. One Google executive, worn down by three years of Chinese harrassment, told a U.S. diplomat that the company might consider leaving China, a comment quoted in this July 2009 cable. With company co-founder Sergey Brin already going public with his qualms, Google’s Chinese future seems in doubt.
The cables reveal how Beijing relentlessly pressurizes Google to achieve its economic and political goals.
Nov 27
‘Control of diplomacy by the people’
Europe, Internet, Russia, United Kingdom, United States
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The long Wikileaks drum roll continues. From FT.com:.
Nov 26
How WikiLeaks is changing the world
Americas, Internet, Russia, United States
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With Wikileak’s next document dump generating fear in Washington and glee in Russia, Christopher Schwartz at RFL/RE points out, correctly I think, that the upstart Web site is changing the nature of the international order by exposing a central truth: the Americans have dirt on everyone.
Assange and company’s logic is as elegant as it’s unsettling: by revealing the secrets of the world’s leading superpower, the secrets of the world — namely, the all-too-often dirty web of interconnections between governments, corporations, intelligence and media agencies, and key personalities — are also revealed.
There are potential lessons here, some likely old, some hopefully new, and all doubtlessly very unhappy, about the nature of power and what it really means to be an “international community.”
One lesson is that the secrecy essential to U.S. diplomacy faces unprecedented pressure from the network.
Nov 22
JFK: What we know now
Americas, assassination, Cuba, political violence, United States
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My take on the historical record of JFK’s assassination appears today in the Atlantic.com (and en espanol on Cubebate.cu)
Nov 19
GM: The Pride of Beijing
Americas, Asia, China, United States
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The revived auto giant was made in China, claims the People’s Daily, and they got some numbers that say the Chinese sit in GM’s driver’s seat.
GM and its ventures in China sold 199,641 vehicles last month, up 20 percent from the year before. That took its sales for the first 10 months of the year to 1,976,913 vehicles — a gain of 36 percent….
So even as America protects its manufacturing base, the dominant market power of China is felt. In the alternative universe known as mainstream American politics this will perhaps be cited as proof that Obama’s administration’s success in Detroit is a victory for Maoist socialism.
