## The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: Peter Daou's cynical but depressingly accurate precis of how the Bush administration and its allies shrug off and spin away scandal after scandal. Peter predicts the current cycle of outrage over the government's flagrantly illegal domestic spying will pass like each previous cycle. He might well be right.
## David Edelstein says Munich is the best film of the year: "Today, saying our enemy is 'evil' is like saying a preventable tragedy is 'God's will': It's a way of letting ourselves off the hook for crimes committed in our name. Not incidentally, it's also a way for our enemies to let themselves off the hook." Guess I'll have to see it now!
## Doc Searls continues to advance the conversation on the "unbundling" of media (my small contribution, on the unbundling of the newspaper, was here):
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What will happen, I wondered, when Toyota does the math, realizes how inefficient local TV advertising is, and drops its dealer advertising co-op program? Is this not inevitable? Why don't we have better ways for sellers and buyers to inform each other? Terry puts the onus on advertisers, who are on the supply side; but why not equip demand to notify markets about what it desires? Why should I not be able to publish, selectively, and in a private yet usefully exposed way, that I would like to rent a 4+ bedroom house on Younameit Beach for the last week in April? Why should I have to go hunting among sellers for the same thing, ignoring all the promotional crap that goes with the seller-controlled nonconversation we call marketing? |
## Salon readers know Laura Miller as a co-founder of the site, our one-time books editor and longtime book critic, who has shone a bright and steady light in all her work. Years ago she recommended Philip Pullman's magnificent "His Dark Materials" trilogy to my wife and me, and they were the only books I can remember being able to finish -- indeed, being compelled to finish -- in the months of harrowing sleep deprivation I experienced during my twin sons' infancy. Now Laura has written a beautiful profile of Pullman for the New Yorker, "Far From Narnia" -- which his work truly is, in the best possible way.
Meanwhile, The Guardian also has an interesting profile of Ursula Le Guin, another great fantasist of our time.
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