Danile Drezner’s got a good post about the American Film Institute’s “100 Years…100 Songs” list. He lists a lot of worthy candidates missing from the official list that I agree with, but leaves off an important pick. Any list of great songs that doesn’t include “Big Bottom” by Spinal Tap isn’t worth your time.

Kerry’s silence on the VP issue is turning the press corps into stalkers :

Kerry has been in the Capitol infrequently this year as he pursues the presidency. But on this day, the man whose days are normally a frenzy of campaign activity spent hours chatting amiably with colleagues on the senate floor, giving fellow Democrats an overview of his campaign at a closed-door lunch and posing with 99 other senators for the formal portrait of the 108th Congress.

He got a high-five greeting from Sen. Barbara Boxer of California; a kiss from Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and a thumbs-up from Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. “Our next president is in there. He was fantastic,” Boxer said after attending the lunch.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who rejected overtures that he join Kerry on a ticket that crossed party lines, walked by him on the senate floor at one point and leaned over to greet his fellow Vietnam War veteran. Kerry remained seated, the two men grasped hands and chatted briefly.
. . .
Edwards, a first-term North Carolina senator, was present on the senate floor for nearly the entire time in the morning that Kerry mingled, but the two men stayed in separate orbits.

They met a few hours later, when they repaired to a small room and closed the doors for a private word. The session did not appear on either man’s schedule and lasted only a few minutes.Aides to Kerry sought to minimize the political significance of the meeting. For his part, the Massachusetts senator appeared taken aback afterward when he realized photographers were waiting for the two men to leave the room. He spoke to senate aides, who then informed waiting photographers he did not wish to have his picture taken.

Whatever the significance of the meeting, Edwards has influential supporters in the jockeying that accompanies the selection of a running mate.

“After the meeting, Kerry had two cans of Diet Coke, read pages 24-38 of Clinton’s new memoir, and went to the bathroom. Although aides refuse to disclose whether the senate nominee went number one or number two, Kerry’s fondness for diet soda suggests that he had to pee-pee.”

Seriously though, I love that Kerry’s being so tight-lipped about his selection process. The buzz he’s creating about this whole process is great for the Kerry campaign, since every “Who’s he gonna pick?” story likely means that there’s one less “Kerry is a waffler” (how original). I saw drag this thing out as long as you can get away with it.

I wrote a month ago about Slate’s new Kerryisms feature. At the time, my biggest complaint wasn’t funny. In the month since that post, Slate has bent over backwards trying to find “caveats and curlicues” to the point that the column mostly consists of arbitrarily removing phrases from Kerry quotes. In the process, they often misrepresent what Kerry has said. For example :

Question: But no regrets about those votes [for NAFTA and the China trade agreement]?

Kerry: [1]Sure.

?senate presidential primary debate, Milwaukee, Feb. 15, 2004

[1] I regret the way that they haven’t been enforced,

Verbatim:

I regret the way that they haven’t been enforced, sure.

If you just read Slate’s version of the Kerry quote, you’d think that Kerry is agreeing with the “no regrets” statement when the full version of the quote makes the exact opposite point.

And this isn’t the only example, either. Last week, Spinsanity noted the following distortion :

Kerry’s original statement, from a February 9 broadcast of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” was the following:

I am the only United States Senator who has been elected four times, currently serving in the senate, who has voluntarily refused to ever take, in any of my races for the senate, one dime of political action committee special interest money. The only checks I took were from individual Americans. Now did some individual lobbyists contribute? The answer is, yes, they did.

Will Saletan, the author of “Kerryisms,” edited it into the following form (footnotes representing excised text appear in brackets):

I am the only United States Senator[1][2] who has voluntarily refused to ever take in any of my races[3] one dime of[4] special interest money. The only checks I took were from individual Americans.[5]

By removing “political action committee” with footnote 4 and the clarification about accepting donations from individual lobbyists in footnote 5, Saletan makes Kerry’s precise claim much less clear. But, more importantly, the removal of the text in footnotes 1-3 actually makes the statement untrue.

Also last week, Eugene Volokh noted yet another column twisting the facts as egregiously as the examples above and ended his post with this comment :

What exactly is the point of the Kerryisms? At first, I thought — based on the column’s introductory installment — the Kerryisms were meant to show that Kerry throws in lots of unnecessary verbiage. But here, this was a necessary proviso.

Another possibility is that “Kerryisms” has evolved into an attempt to show simply that Kerry uses a lot of qualifiers, instead of giving very simple answers. But often, as in this case, the right answer isn’t simple. It’s actually not terribly complex, but it’s not one-word simple. Is it really good to fault a politician for refusing to oversimplify? Should we want supposedly smart media outlets mocking politicians for trying to be precise?

The only other option that I see is that the column has descended into self-parody. (”Question: What’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to the diameter? Kerry’s real answer: 3.1415926. Our answer, shorn of caveats and pointless embellishments: 3.”) But surely it can’t be intentional self-parody. So I ask again, what’s the point?

I think the point is that now we’re in an election year and Slate feels the need to balance out their coverage by providing Kerryisms to sit beside their regular Bushisms. The problem here is that Kerry’s speech isn’t as littered with “pointless embellishments” as the editors of Slate want to believe.

UPDATE : Via Digby, I see that William Saletan has posted an explanation of the Kerryisms column…sorta. His explanation is, to borrow a phrase, full of “caveats and curlicues” including this retarded analogy :

It’s like they ordered steak at a restaurant, and the waiter carved the meat off the bone, and they looked at the bone and accused the waiter of removing the meat. I’m the waiter, so I bear some blame.

Huh??

One of the funny things about living in Southern California is that you see cellphone towers all over the place disguised to look like palm trees. Apparently that’s not the only way cellphone companies hide their equipment (via BoingBoing):

European companies are finding ingenious ways to disguise ugly, but necessary, mobile phone antenna masts. Customers can pick everything from trees to crucifixes.
. . .
The latter crosses the line for some congregations, who are not willing to see Christ on a cross, with antennae sticking out here and there. The mayor of Schwabhausen, in deeply Catholic Bavaria, has come out against such an antenna in his village church. Mobile phone companies are hesitant as well.

“The churches actually don’t like it so much,” said Susanne Satzer-Spree, a Vodafone spokeswoman.

However, some houses of worship have managed to make their masts part of their identity.

“Everyone recognizes the church now,” said Johannes de Fallois, pastor at a church in Neuburg.

Would you go to a church with this on top?

Seriously, if anyone can track down a high quality version of this photo, I’ll be your best friend forever. I need a t-shirt with this on it.

Instapundit is a little confused by Bill Clinton’s new book :

THEY MAY BE STANDING IN LONG LINES for Bill Clinton’s book in New York, but when I visited my local mall just a few minutes after it opened this morning, the customers didn’t seem to be lining up for their copies.

Interestingly, there are still no reader reviews on the book’s Amazon page, though it does report that the book’s number one.

In case you’re a dumbass like Glenn, here’s the deal : the Amazon rank is based on sales and the reviews are based on reader reactions to the book. One happens before the book is read and the other happens after. Since the book was only released twelve hours ago and the book is 900 pages long, isn’t it a little early to be expecting Amazon reviews to be showing up? I’m sure that Glenn knows this, but he’d never let that get in the way of a cheap shot at the Clintons and/or the liberal media.

You know Bush’s “full sovereignty” malarkey isn’t working when the press starts using quotation marks in their headlines :

U.S. to Give ‘Legal’ Custody of Saddam to Iraqis

The United States plans to turn over legal, but not physical, custody of Saddam Hussein and some other prisoners to the Iraqi interim government soon after it takes over on June 30, a senior official said on Tuesday.
. . .
“Because the Iraqi interim government is not currently in a position to safeguard these detainees, at least in large numbers, our current plan calls for the transfer of legal responsibility over a certain number of high-profile detainees…while physical custody will remain with the multinational force in Iraq,” he told reporters.

Maybe it would be easier to report on the Iraqi handover by listing the rights that the Iraqis will have, rather than the endless stream of stories about various rights that are being chipped away by the Americans in charge over there.

There’s been plenty written about the blurring of the lines between entertainment and news, but the standard story only covers half of the picture. While news outlets move closer and closer to the hellish infotainment depicted in Network (if you haven’t seen it lately, rent it!), the flip side of this is that some entertainment shows are now filling in the void left by the news networks. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about from an interview with Stephen Hayes from last night’s episode of The Daily Show :

Stewart : It seems like Bush has started a new doctrine, the Bush Doctrine…[which] sets the standard for preemption. Now the first time you exercise a new doctrine, wouldn’t you want to be very sure of yourself because that will set a standard, no?

Hayes : I think the idea behind the Bush doctrine is that if you support or harbor terrorists, we’re gonna come after you. We’ll consider you a hostile regime. I don’t think that frankly in the aftermath of September 11th, I really don’t think that’s an unreasonable doctrine.

Stewart : Here’s the problem. It’s not unreasonable, but it’s not he point. The point is…I’ll list you four things : developing weapons of mass destruction, inflammatory rhetoric against the United States, supporting and harboring terrorism, and oppression of their own people. Now here’s the problem with your doctrine. You can’t tell me what country I just named. And that’s a problem when you’re talking about war. You don’t know if I’m talking about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Sudan.

As the interview continued, Stewart elaborated on his point that the Bush Doctrine is meaningless if it isn’t applied evenly throughout the world and in the process ripping apart the argument that Stephen Hayes makes in his book, The Connection. Here we have a guy who’s written a book claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda, and he’s getting his ass handed to him by a comedian.

The way The Daily Show should work is that they mention a news item that we’re familiar with in order to set up some jokes. Unfortunately, with the news often beating stories to death rather than dig up new ones, The Daily Show is now in a situation in which it’s doing a better job covering important stories than the “real” news. For a good example of this, check out this post that compares the coverage of the State Department’s “mistake” on 2003’s global terrorism report card.

As far as I’m concerned, we should just stop calling The Daily Show “fake” news. True, they’re a comedy show, but how is what Jon Stewart (et. al.) doing much different than what what Bill O’Reilly does? The only big difference I see is that The Daily show mixes it’s news with comedy while the O’Reilly Factor mixes it’s news with bombast.

UPDATE : I posted this comment to E-Rock’s post that disagrees somewhat with my conclusions. Hopefully this clarifies things some :

I was exaggerating a bit, but I think that The Daily Show has eclipsed the real news in two important respects :

1) They’re providing better insight and raising more important points than the most of the news organizations that they parody. Could you imagine the questions that Jon Stewart asked last night coming out of the mouths of Larry King or Paula Zahn?

2) They’re providing more coverage for some actual news stories than the cable news networks. Take a look at the post I linked to and you’ll see that that the news outlets were mostly ignoring the huge news that the Bush Administration’s self-evaluation of their success on fighting terrorism was wrong.

Unlike Politically Incorrect, SNL, or The Onion, The Daily Show is finding itself in a position of “breaking” news not because they’re journalists, but because our media has been dropping the ball.

Since I’ve been slashdotted, I’d imagine that the majority of the people reading this site today could care less about politics. That being the case, here’s a question I’ve got for you guys : What do you think about the Federal Trade Commission’s decision to oppose the creation of a “Do Not Spam” list? Personally, I think a list like that would never work since spammers can just move their servers offshore. That being the case (and feel free to disagree with me on that), what can we do to stop it? Here’s an idea that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while :

The first thing we need to do is come up with a definition of spam beyond the standard “I know it when I see it”. While “unsolicited mass email” is a nice, vague description, it’s still a little too broad. For example, I work for a big company that sends out millions of emails a day for various newletters, greetings, etc. While these emails may sometimes fit into the criteria above, they’re definitely not spam. Yet, some of the more aggressive spam blocking solutions out there have our company’s email servers “flagged”.

Once we’ve seperated the wheat from the chaff, the next step would be to come up with some anti-spam laws. Due to the lack of a federal anti-spam law, this is handled on a state-by-state basis. Since spammer can simply move their servers outside the jurisdiction of any anti-spam laws, it seems to me that even federal laws will be toothless. At this point, the only real way to regulate this is through international means.

Which leads to the crux of my idea, which is that an international body of some sort should come up with some anti-spam laws that have equal penalties in each of the countries that sign onto the agreement. The keey to making this work however would be that any countries who don’t agree with the terms laid out would have their internet access to and from any of the anti-spam countries blocked at the backbone level. Simply put, if you facilitate spammers, you don’t get to play with the rest of the internet.

Of course this all just a totalitarian fantasy that would never work. Even if we could all agree on all of the conditions I outlined above in a way that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s online freedom, we still live in a country in which the person in charge of the Justice Department thinks Left Behind belongs in the non-fiction section of the bookstore and that any international cooperation is a step towards everyone getting “666″ tattooed on our foreheads.

This is what we get when we have leaders who put their own prejudices above the interests of national security :

Even with concerns growing about military troop strength, 770 people were discharged for homosexuality last year under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a new study shows.

The figure, however, is significantly lower than the record 1,227 discharges in 2001 ? just before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was adopted in 1994, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged ? including linguists, nuclear warfare experts and other key specialists.
. . .
Hundreds of those discharged held high-level job specialties that required years of training and expertise, including 90 nuclear power engineers, 150 rocket and missile specialists and 49 nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare specialists.

Eighty-eight linguists were discharged, including at least seven Arab language specialists.

Before you feel like reminding me that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was from Clinton, lemme remind you that 9/11 supposedly “changed everything”. If we’re serious about fighting terrorism, policies like this should be the first to go. At the very least, the whole “unit cohesion” argument doesn’t hold a lot of water (not that it ever did) when we’re talking about guys who sit in cubicles all day translating emails. George Bush could change this with a phone call if he wanted to, but he’d rather placate his conservative base.

Yeah, this is an old story, but since it’s one of the headlines on CNN, it’s worth revisiting :

Ray Bradbury is demanding an apology from filmmaker Michael Moore for lifting the title from his classic science-fiction novel “Fahrenheit 451″ without permission and wants the new documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ to be renamed.

“He didn’t ask my permission,” Bradbury, 83, told The Associated Press on Friday. “That’s not his novel, that’s not his title, so he shouldn’t have done it.”

The 1953 novel, widely considered Bradbury’s masterpiece, portrays an ugly futuristic society in which firemen burn homes and libraries in order to destroy the books inside and keep people from thinking independently.
. . .
Bradbury, who is a registered political independent, said he would rather avoid litigation and is “hoping to settle this as two gentlemen, if he’ll shake hands with me and give me back my book and title.”
. . .
Bradbury’s book was made into a 1966 movie directed by Francois Truffaut. A new edition of the book is scheduled for release in eight weeks, Bradbury said, and plans are in the works for a new film version, to be directed by Frank Darabont.

As many people have pointed out, Bradbury “borrowed” the title “Something Wicked This Way Comes” from Shakespeare and ” I Sing The Body Electric” from Walt Whitman, so it’s not like he’s got firm ground to stand on here. It’s made even more ludicrous by Ray’s insistence that Michael “give back” his book, as if Fahrenheit 451 itself was stolen.

What I think is even crazier is that I had no idea Truffaut made that movie. Is it any good? I had just assumed that the only versions of 451 that had made it to the screen were cheesy TV movies made in the 70s.