The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

     ~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

Constant Comments

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. — Anonymous

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolvesEdward R. Murrow

Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns

I have a Bluesky account now. The URL is https://bsky.app/profile/marie-burns.bsky.social . When Reality Chex goes down, check my Bluesky page for whatever info I am able to report on the status of Reality Chex. If you can't access the URL, I found that I could Google Bluesky and ask for Marie Burns. Google will include links to accounts for people whose names are, at least in part, Maria Burns, so you'll have to tell Google you looking only for Marie.

Sunday
Jul142013

The Commentariat -- July 15, 2013

Paul Krugman: "Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole [farm bill] package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net. So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies -- at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed -- while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.... One of our nation's two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness...."

CSI Macy's. Stephanie Clifford & Quentin Hardy of the New York Times: "Nordstrom's experiment [in shopper-tracking] is part of a movement by retailers to gather data about in-store shoppers' behavior and moods, using video surveillance and signals from their cellphones and apps to learn information as varied as their sex, how many minutes they spend in the candy aisle and how long they look at merchandise before buying it. All sorts of retailers -- including national chains, like Family Dollar, Cabela's and Mothercare, a British company, and specialty stores like Benetton and Warby Parker -- are testing these technologies and using them to decide on matters like changing store layouts and offering customized coupons." CW: and you're apopletic because the government is storing your e-mails??? ...

... Jenny Barchfield of the AP: "Edward Snowden has very sensitive 'blueprints' detailing how the National Security Agency operates that would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance..., [Glenn Greenwald] said Sunday." ...

... CW: I am growing more & more pissed at the NSA for allowing such access to a kid who had worked for the agency for only weeks. The "experts" who are supposed to be protecting us from so-called terrorists can't even protect themselves from a new-hire hacker with little formal education. Whatever you may think of Snowden's motives, the bottom line is that he did it because he could. ...

... Ellen Nakashima & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, [Gen. Keith] Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications." ...

... Ian Cobain of the Guardian writes an interesting piece on the U.S. "disposition matrix," a/k/a Obama's "kill list" & how Great Britain has used it to target individuals with dual British-&-Someplace citizenship.

The No-Policy Policy. George Packer of the New Yorker: "In the two and a half years since the popular protests that overthrew the Mubarak regime, the Administration has followed a pattern: express concern about tumultuous events [in Egypt], then accept their outcome as a fait accompli and make the best of the new status quo, without a perceptible effort to use whatever influence the U.S. still has over the main actors in Egypt's political drama."

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "The fallout over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin reverberated across the country on Sunday from church pulpits to street protests, setting off a conversation about race, crime and how the American justice system handled a racially polarizing killing of a young black man walking in a residential neighborhood in Florida." ...

... Statement by the President. "I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son." ...

... Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Sunday urged the Justice Department to review federal charges against George Zimmerman who was acquitted in Sanford, Fla., of murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin."...

... Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed: "Federal prosecutors are pressing forward with their investigation into the killing of Trayvon Martin following the acquittal of the man who shot him, George Zimmerman, on state charges, a spokesperson for the Justice Department said Sunday.... The Justice Department's civil rights division as well as the FBI are continuing to investigate Martin's death, the statement said." ...

The evidence didn't support prosecution and the Justice Department engaged in this, the President engaged in this and turned it into a political issue that should have been handled exclusively with law and order. -- Rep. Steve King (RCrazy-Iowa)

... the grand jury in the case also did find that there was 'probable cause.' King's suggestion that a 'not guilty' verdict proves that there should not have been an investigation or trial at all suggests a stunning disregard for the value of Martin's life. But his -- and [Fox 'News' host Chris] Wallace's -- inference that there would not have been a prosecution if not for President Obama is flatly contradicted by the facts. -- Josh Israel, Think Progress

David Edwards of the Raw Story: "Republican strategist Karl Rove on Sunday accused President Barack Obama of tearing the country apart by sympathizing with the parents of slain teen Trayvon Martin.... 'We need a president to bring us together, not rip us apart,' he added. 'And I hope the Justice Department does not respond to the ill-advised recommendation of the NAACP to continue this controversy.'" CW: so according to Karl, the best way to "bring us together" is to condone or at least ignore radical, random violence against young black men. ...

... Lizette Alvarez of the New York Times: " Mr. Zimmerman had the power of self-defense laws on his side, and was helped by a spotty police investigation and prosecutorial missteps." Alvarez provides a good explanation of why the jury found Zimmerman not guilty. ...

... CW: if you're blaming -- or partially blaming -- the jury for their verdict, you're making a mistake. And no, Geraldo, the verdict does not support your contention that the white women on the jury would have acted just as Zimmerman did. ...

... CW: I don't agree with this, but it is pretty funny. Thanks to James S. for sending it along:

Fucking punks. These assholes. They always get away. -- George Zimmerman, shortly after shooting Trayvon Martin dead ...

... Charles Pierce: "George Zimmerman can load his piece, tuck it into the back of his pants, climb into his SUV, and drive around Sanford, Florida looking for assholes and fucking punks who are walking through neighborhoods where he, George Zimmerman, defender of law and order, doesn't think they belong.... The Sanford P.D. was ready to hand Zimmerman back his gun with a fast shuffle until people got into the streets and suggested, loudly, that maybe the circumstances required another look. This is something that should be remembered now by all those sharp guys who talk about how the evidence cut both ways, and about how the prosecution overcharged the defendant, and about how well the defense mounted its case. There wasn't supposed to be a trial at all." ...

... Yup. Matt Guttman & Seni Tienabeso of ABC News: "George Zimmerman will get his gun back now that he has been cleared of murder and his lawyer said today that Zimmerman needs the weapon 'even more' than before.... Mark O'Mara [the attorney] ... said that Zimmerman intends to rearm himself." CW: because killing one hoodie-wearing scary kid is not enough. ...

... The Real Victim. Chris Francescani of Reuters: "After his acquittal on murder charges for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman may go to law school to help people wrongly accused of crimes like himself, close friends told Reuters on Sunday." ...

CW: Lest it should possibly get lost among the hype, "not guilty" does not equal "innocent." That is especially true in Florida, where the state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not act in self-defense. Here the tie goes to the one who didn't get shot dead.

... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post: "Last night's not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial will enable the neighborhood-watch volunteer to resume his case against NBC News for the mis-editing of his widely distributed call to police. Back in December, Zimmerman sued NBC Universal Media for defamation over the botched editing, which depicted him as a hardened racial profiler."

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker describes "... a Republican strategy to defeat immigration reform, increase its support among whites, and make it harder for some nonwhites to vote. It's a recipe for a future in which America's two parties are largely defined by race. The unpleasant conclusion of this debate -- and of the Obama years -- could be the opposite of where we thought we were headed as a country.... The decision that Republicans make on immigration reform in the coming months will help determine that future." ...

... CW: now ask yourself why conservatives are embracing George Zimmerman. It is not foolish, BTW, to see the glorification of the Second Amendment as racism-inspired. Worth noting: the Second Amendment found its way into the Bill of Rights specifically because Southerners wanted to make sure they could put down slave rebellions.

Paul Fahri of the Washington Post: "Faced with news articles they consider flawed or biased, the [Koch] brothers and their lieutenants ... take the offensive, with detailed responses that oscillate between correcting, shaming and slamming journalists who've written unflattering stories about the company or the Kochs' myriad political and philanthropic activities.... Unlike most companies, which tend to work out their differences with reporters behind the scenes, Koch ... often takes its feuds public.... Journalists who've run afoul of the Kochs will often see their personal e-mail exchanges with company executives posted, on the Koch Web site.... KochFacts also posts lengthy, point-by-point critiques of news stories and calls out reporters for alleged factual errors and biases. A typical KochFacts headline from May: 'New Yorker's Jane Mayer Distorts the Facts and Misleads Readers Again.'" CW: The Kochs's all-out war on Mayer must cheer her immensely.

Local News

Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "Just six months after declaring 'the prison crisis is over in California,' Gov. Jerry Brown is facing dire predictions about the future of the state's prison system, one of the largest in the nation. A widespread inmate hunger strike in protest of California's policy of solitary confinement was approaching its second week on Sunday. The federal courts have demanded the release of nearly 10,000 inmates and the transfer of 2,600 others who are at risk of contracting a deadly disease in the state's overcrowded prisons. State lawmakers have called for an investigation into a new report that nearly 150 women behind bars were coerced into being sterilized over the last decade. And last week, a federal judge ruled that prisoners were not receiving adequate medical care"

News Ledes

Guardian: "A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, has blocked the execution of Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled man who was set to be put to death by lethal injection despite a US supreme court ban on judicial killings of 'mentally retarded' people. Hill, 52, has been granted a slim window in which to argue that his rights have been violated by a recent state law that imposes secrecy on the drugs that would be used to kill him. Under the new Lethal Injection Secrecy Law, the identity of the suppliers of the sedative pentobarbital that would be given to him in a lethal dose has been deemed a 'state secret' in an effort to bypass a growing international boycott of the use of pharmaceuticals in death sentences."

New York Times: "Leonard Garment, a Wall Street litigator who was a top adviser to President Richard M. Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal and who went on to flourish as one of the capital's most powerful and garrulous lawyers, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89."

AP: "Thousands of demonstrators from across the country -- chanting, praying and even fighting tears — protested a jury's decision to clear neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager while the Justice Department considered whether to file criminal civil rights charges. Rallies on Sunday were largely peaceful as demonstrators voiced their support for 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's family -- and decried Zimmerman's not guilty verdict as a miscarriage of justice...."

Guardian: Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, "the first senior US official to visit Egypt since the army toppled the country's elected president will hold high-level talks on Monday in Cairo, where thousands of supporters of the ousted Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi are expected to take to the streets."

BBC News: India's telegraph service shuts down forevah. CW: BTW, "private" correspondence, in telegraphic form, was not exactly private.

Saturday
Jul132013

The Commentariat -- July 14, 2013

Meghashyam Mali of Reuters: "Attorney General Eric Holder faces a crucial decision on whether to press federal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman, after the neighborhood watchman was acquitted Saturday in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. The NAACP and other leading civil rights groups are pressing for Holder to open a federal case against Zimmerman, after he was found not guilty on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges by a Florida jury." ...

... CW: the Zimmerman case -- because it is so high-profile -- is an ideal candidate for federal charges. Except against wealthy defendants, where it's worthwhile to bring a civil suit, the threat of a federal rap is the only deterrent against reckless disregard for human life. ...

... Jelani Cobb in the New Yorker: "There’s fear that the verdict will embolden vigilantes, but that need not be the concern: history has already done that." Thanks to Diane for the link. ...

** ... Andrew Cohen of the Atlantic: "... you can go looking for trouble in Florida, with a gun and a great deal of racial bias, and you can find that trouble, and you can act upon that trouble in a way that leaves a young man dead, and none of it guarantees that you will be convicted of a crime. But this curious result says as much about Florida's judicial and legislative sensibilities as it does about Zimmerman's conduct that night. This verdict would not have occurred in every state. It might not even have occurred in any other state. But it occurred here, a tragic confluence that leaves a young man's untimely death unrequited under state law. Don't like it? Lobby to change Florida's laws." ...

... Paul Campos in Salon: "Trayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black."

Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "When President Obama proclaimed that those who commit sexual assault in the military should be 'prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged,' it had an effect he did not intend: muddying legal cases across the country. In at least a dozen sexual assault cases since the president’s remarks at the White House in May, judges and defense lawyers have said that Mr. Obama’s words as commander in chief amounted to 'unlawful command influence,' tainting trials as a result. Military law experts said that those cases were only the beginning and that the president’s remarks were certain to complicate almost all prosecutions for sexual assault."

Mitra Taj of Reuters: "Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents [Edward] Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the U.S. government should be careful in its pursuit of the former computer analyst. 'Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,' Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion. 'The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.'" ...

     ... Glenn Greenwald confirms that he has a persecution complex: "About the Reuters Article. ... Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. It's particularly being seized on to attack Edward Snowden and, secondarily, me, for supposedly 'blackmailing' and 'threatening' the US government. That is just absurd." CW translation: "You people are picking on Ed & me." While it is true that Taj does not recite the question to which Greenwald responded, I'll be damned if I can see where a reasonable reader would infer that Greenwald is blackmailing or threatening anyone or that the reporter is attacking Snowden. As Greenwald would say, "That is just absurd." ...

     ... CW Update: well, okay, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs writes, "Today, Glenn Greenwald is basically issuing blackmail threats to the US government.... What an amazingly arrogant, skin-crawlingly creepy statement, even for this most arrogant of journalists. Is Greenwald trying to get Edward Snowden killed?" So I stand corrected. Still, I don't take Greenwald's remarks -- in context or out -- as tantamount to blackmail.

Charles Pierce has a nice little essay on the Majority Party in the U.S. House of Representatives: John Boehner "is no more the actual Speaker Of The House than Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is vice-president of the United States. The House Of Representatives is being led by the vicious and demented Id of one of the two major political parties...."

Congressional Race

Matt Gouras of the AP: "Popular former Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Saturday morning that he will not run for Montana's open U.S. Senate seat in 2014, an announcement that complicates Democratic efforts to retain their majority in next year's elections." ...

... Well, maybe that's not so bad. Kathleen Geier of Washington Monthly: "I’ve been less than impressed; Schweitzer is ardently opposed to even the most mild forms of gun control and his anti-tax, pro-war-on-drug rhetoric and policies are the last thing we need more of in Congress. On top of that, recent stories about his alleged links to 'secret money' and rumors of more damaging info to come were causing Montana Democratic officials to have second thoughts about his possible senate candidacy.... There may be an upside here. This Politico story identifies three potential Democratic candidates for the senate seat, and all of them are women."

Local News

Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post profiles Maureen McDonnell, wife of the Virginia governor, who is mightily culpable in the financial scandals that have all but ruined his future in politics.

Paul Nussbaum, et al., of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "In the weeks before the deadly Market Street collapse, the building's owner repeatedly warned top city officials and Salvation Army officials that the demolition could endanger the adjacent Salvation Army thrift store. But that did not prompt the city to step in. Nor did it stop the owner from rapidly demolishing the building - with devastating consequences."

News Ledes

New York Times: "George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge."

San Francisco Chronicle: "The third passenger to perish in the Asiana Airlines crash was among the ill-fated group of students on their way from China on a summer tour to learn English, officials confirmed Saturday. Liu Yi Peng, 15, of Jiangshan city in Zhejiang province, died Friday, the same day police confirmed that another fatally injured student in the group, Ye Meng Yuan, 16, had been run over by a fire truck. It is not known whether Ye was alive at the time."

Saturday
Jul132013

God, Sex and Procreation

I'm trying to figure out how the abstinence thing works with the anti-abortion thing. According to Christian conservatives, God wants us to have sex only under certain strict conditions: with our spouses of the opposite sex when our immediate purpose is to procreate and we don't enjoy ourselves too much.

Otherwise, we must abstain from having sex (and even thinking about sex).

Also according to Christian conservatives, God has a plan for each of us.

So let's say, God forbid (and I mean that literally), a woman has sexual relations under other than those prescribed circumstances. And let's say, God forbid (and I mean that literally), she gets pregnant as a result of said ungodly encounter.

If God did not want the woman to have sex in the first place, then God cannot have wanted her to get pregnant. The pregnancy is not part of God's plan.

If God did not want the woman to get pregnant, then God did not want her to have a child. Ergo, God would want the woman to have an abortion.