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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Thursday
Dec302010

The Commentariat -- December 31

The New York Times has 10 videos of different events of the year in review.

Francis Battista of Best Friends Animal Society: "Now that President Obama has jumped on the Michael Vick bandwagon with an official call to Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie to congratulate him for giving the quarterback another chance, all of us here at Best Friends are waiting for a call from the White House to congratulate us for giving Vick’s dogs a second chance. I’m quite sure that the other organizations that also took on some of the canine survivors of the football star’s dogfighting operation are similarly poised." Thanks to a progressive friend for the link; she signs herself "Sanctimonious Purrrrrist."

Sam Harris in Common Dreams suggests a New Year's resolution for the rich: let's sponsor a 21st-century Renaissance right here in the U.S.A. Thanks to Kate M. for the link.

Amy Lee of the Huffington Post: "For affluent Americans outraged by ... tax cuts ... [that were] extended for two more years, a trio of ... academics has furnished a way for them to put their money where their mouth is. Their new website, giveitbackforjobs.org, invites high-income Americans to calculate the value of their tax cut under the extension and then pledge to donate that money directly to charities.... The site doesn't accept contributions directly, but links users to the charities." CW Irony Alert: what Lee & other news writers on this story don't mention is that the rich who donate to these laudable charities will end up getting tax breaks for the donations; 100% of the donation will be deducted from their earned income & they won't have to pay taxes on it. It's a double tax cut!

** Jeffrey Sachs in the Guardian: "US politics, often decried for its 'partisanship', is all too bipartisan – in its deeply dysfunctional consensus on tax and wealth.... Obama swept to power on the promise of change. So far, there has been none. His administration is filled with Wall Street bankers. His top officials leave to join the banks, as his budget director Peter Orszag recently did. Obama is always ready to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, with no line in the sand, no limit to 'compromise'."

When $65 Million Is Not Enough. Miguel Helft of the New York Times: the Winklevoss twins fight on against Time's Man of the Year.

Washington Post: "There is an 'urgent need' for Senate Democrats and Republicans to put aside their bickering and fill federal judicial vacancies, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote Friday in his annual State of the Judiciary report."

AP: "Billy the Kid, the Old West outlaw who killed at least three lawmen and tried to cut a deal from jail with territorial authorities, won't be pardoned, Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday. The prospect of a pardon for the notorious frontier figure nearly 130 years after his death drew international attention to New Mexico, centering on whether Billy the Kid had been promised a pardon from New Mexico's territorial governor in return for testimony in killings he had witnessed. But the facts of the case didn't support a pardon, Richardson said Friday on ABC's 'Good Morning America.'" The ABC News story & interview of Gov. Richardson is here.

Marcus Baram of the Huffington Post: in his new epilogue to the paperback edition of The Promise, Jonathan Alter writes (according to Baram), that "the Obama administration's perceived failure to take laser-like aim at the unemployment crisis was partly due to the dysfunctional relationship between White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, top economic adviser Larry Summers and senior adviser David Axelrod, specifically the intransigence of Summers." ...

... "The New Voodoo." Paul Krugman is on hypocrisy patrol & he gives Congressional Republicans special dishonorable mention. ...

... Ezra Klein tries to define Obamanomics, & the best he can come up with is this: "... the Obama administration sought to support or improve private markets." Krugman & Wells, whom we linked yesterday, do a better job. But they would. ...

... On the stupidity of tea party demands to attach some Article of the Constitution to every House bill, Klein does a better job. ...

... Steve Benen adds, "... all of this is part of a larger, misguided push intended to show that conservatives are the Constitution's true champions. But ... it's crazy. We are, after all, talking about a House Republican caucus with leaders who support allowing states to overturn federal laws they don't like. In recent years, congressional Republicans ... have advocated constitutional concepts that were discredited generations ago."

John Broder of the New York Times: "With the federal government set to regulate climate-altering gases from factories and power plants for the first time beginning on Sunday, the Obama administration and the new Congress are headed for a clash that carries substantial risks for both sides."

CW: since I don't read the Wall Street Journal editorial page, naturally I missed this op-ed by famed First Amendment defender Floyd Abrams in which he trashes Julian Assange & WikiLeaks. Jack Shafer's answer to Abrams is mighty fine; Shafer makes it pretty clear that the uninformed Abrams has bought into some of those "smears & misconceptions" outlined below. CW: the trouble with having too many friends in high places is that you start to believe the high-placed friends.

Julianne Shepherd & Tana Ganeva in AlterNet: "8 Smears and Misconceptions about WikiLeaks Spread by the Media."

Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Partly because of its design but also because of confusion among its users, the [State Department] database [known as Net-Centric Diplomacy] became an inadvertent repository for a vast array of State Department cables.... Unfortunately for the department, the system lacked features to detect the unauthorized downloading by Pentagon employees and others of massive amounts of data.... The result was a disastrous setback for U.S. diplomatic efforts around the globe."

Bumping the TSA. Derek Kravitz of the Washington Post: "Some of the nation's biggest airports are responding to recent public outrage over security screening by weighing whether they should hire private firms ... to replace the Transportation Security Administration. Sixteen airports, including San Francisco and Kansas City International Airport, have made the switch since 2002." ...

... Meanwhile ... Ashley Halsey of the Washington Post: "The air traffic controllers in the Washington region, who direct more than 1.5 million flights, have made a record number of mistakes this year, triggering cockpit collision warning systems dozens of times."

Susan Jacoby, ever the realist, has a very fine op-ed in the New York Times about what to really expect from old age.

Ginger Thompson & Eric Lipton of the New York Times: "Since leaving the White House, [Lanny] Davis has built a client list that now includes coup supporters in Honduras, a dictator in Equatorial Guinea, for-profit colleges accused of exploiting students, and a company that dominates the manufacture of additives for infant formula. This month, he agreed to represent the Ivory Coast strongman whose claims to that country’s presidency have been condemned by the international community.... [Davis's] role in West Africa has stoked growing criticism that Mr. Davis has become a kind of front man for the dark side, willing to take on some of the world’s least noble companies and causes."

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