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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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.

 

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Tuesday
Nov162010

The Commentariat -- November 16

President Obama awards the Medal of Honor to Army SSgt. Salvatore Giunta. Here's the New York Times story on Giunta's acts of valor:

Michael Moore tells Senate Democrats they've got seven weeks to get off their asses & pass the 420 bills the House already passed. CW: unfortunately, the majority of Senate Democrats are not of a mind to do what's right by the American people.

** Michael Hudson, writing for AlterNet, demonstrates how President Obama's cynical economic policy is indistinguishable from Bush-Cheney pro-Wall Street policies."

Charlie Rangel and Congressional Ethics Farce. Dana Milbank: "The man who until recently had sway over hundreds of billions of dollars as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was now claiming that he was too indigent to hire a lawyer. Half an hour into the public hearing he had demanded for so long, Rangel announced that he was leaving."

We never did enough in terms of [the unemployment rate] for us to have the kind of success we would have. We had a Roosevelt moment and responded like Hoover.-- Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) ...

... Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "Rep. John Larson (Conn.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman who is expected to keep his position in a vote on Wednesday, said that his party did not do enough in the eyes of voters to help bring down the nation's 9.6 percent unemployment rate."

Tom Scotta, in Slate, has a terrific takedown, not just of partisan pollsters Pat Caddell & Douglas Schoen for their disingenuous "bilge," but also of the lowlife editor of the Washington Post's editorial page Fred Hiatt:

Fred Hiatt, the insufferable editor of the Post's opinion pages, seems to believe that people hate his section because he has clung with fearless integrity to his support for invading Iraq ... and because the section's overall politics are to the right of the beliefs of the average reader of the Washington Post. Actually, the reason some of us despise Hiatt and his section is that he consistently chooses to print dishonest garbage, composed by disingenuous partisan hacks, lobbyists, or lobbyist-hacks. The Post opinion section is ... a place where ... professional propagandists float their newest lies, slogans, and unsubstantiated nonsense, to see if they can get them to bob into the political mainstream.

Speaking of hacks writing op-ed nonsense for the Washington Post, here's pseudo-journalist Keith Olbermann harumphing about former journalist Ted Koppel's harumphing over Olbermann & his part in the "death of real news." Keith gets it right:

CBS News: "Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowki told CBS News' Katie Couric today that she would not support Sarah Palin for president because Palin lacks the "leadership qualities" and "intellectual curiosity" to craft great policy":

... Matt Bai of the New York Times: the airing of the first episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" is just a reminder that Sarah Palin herself is a media production. "Palin expertly allowed herself to be shaped by the demands of the marketplace, and in this way she became the best example yet of a new phenomenon in our politics -- what we might think of as the crowd-sourced candidate."

... Nick Bilton of the New York Times: "... refudiate has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, published by the Oxford University Press, beating out a number of other locutions - many technology-related -- that have spread through the language and the Web over the past year."

Alex Pareene of Salon has an appropriately snarky take on Ginni Thomas' departure or demotion or whatever from her tea party "non-profit": "Not because political activism and fundraising (from anonymous donors) by the wife of a Supreme Court justice raises ethical questions, but because the media keeps bugging Ginni about said ethical questions. Just last month, Ginni had to remove her name from a 'memo' that called Obamacare unconstitutional, so that her husband wouldn't have to recuse himself when it came time for him to decide that Obamacare is unconstitutional." ...

Wonkette, of course, is even snarkier. Highly recommended for a laugh.

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans opened the lame-duck session of Congress on Monday by signaling their commitment to the antispending posture that fueled their big gains on Election Day, underscoring the Tea Party movement’s influence on the Republican leadership. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, drove the point home as soon as the Senate convened by announcing that he would support a proposed ban on Congressional earmarks, reversing his longtime practice of avidly pursuing money for his state." ...

... Michael Shear of the New York Times thinks John McCain, who for years has made the banning of earmarks his cri de coeur, must have a bittersweet reaction to President Obama & former earmark lovers being the ones who may actually end earmarks.

Republican Hypocrisy Watch. Glenn Thrush of Politico: Freshman Maryland Republican Congressman Andy Harris, a physician no less, was upset to learn his government-subsidized health insurance policy would not kick in the day he was sworn in. "Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap," said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The staffer "was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine." ...

... I think we finally have a working definition of a health insurance crisis -- when a member of Congress has to go a whole month without coverage. Of course nothing's stopping him [Rep. Harris] from using his own money and purchasing private health insurance in the individual market. Those onerous Obamacare regulations haven't taken effect yet so he can explore the wonders of a still-functioning private insurance market as God and Adam Smith intended. -- Jonathan Chait of The New Republic

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