Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Painful C-SPAN Viewing This last Saturday evening, Jane and I found ourselves watching C-SPAN.  I would make a joke about that being a really bad sign for our social lives as we advance toward middle age, but the reality is that such evenings have become so commonplace that I didn't even give it a second thought. I made Jane stop on C-SPAN because I recognized Eric Alterman as a part of a discussion panel.  I like Alterman, think he's a giant badass and whatnot, so I was happy to see what the hell he was talking about.  There were five other people seated at a table on a stage next to Alterman, who turned out to be the editors of The Onion.  Well hell, I figured this was a sure-fire hit.  I like the Onion just like every other reasonable person does, and Alterman's a media criticism giant, so how could we go wrong? It was the worst 20 minutes of TV I have ever witnessed, and that's coming from someone who watches a lot of cable access.  Not only was it in no way funny, it was quite visibly uncomfortable.  The Onion people were just jackasses, and not in a "Oh, that's one funny jackass" kind of way.  They weren't cantankerous.  They weren't provacative.  They were just pretentious idiots who had nothing much at all to say that was in any way constructive.  They made snide little jokes that were mostly inside jokes.  Always a hoot!  Mostly, they just seemed disrespectful of the audience, the forum and Alterman.  I'm sure I saw Alterman check his watch a few times in the course of the evening. The lesson?  Just because people are funny writers does not make them funny people.  And of course, never, ever watch C-SPAN. 11:45:15 AM    Say what?[]

Ryan Adams Has A Meltdown At First Avenue I have a bit of a fetish about performer meltdowns.  I just think they're great to watch and read about.  It has been some time since I wrote about seeing live music, but there's no doubt that a part of that experience is seeing shows that just, for one reason or another, turn ugly. Well, as it happens, Ryan Adams had a meltdown at First Avenue last night.  Among other problems, it seems he was a bit hurt that the Replacements' Paul Westerberg, one of his idols, said that Adams "needs to get his teeth kicked in." I don't know Ryan Adams' music well at all.  I have none of his work, and what I've heard struck me as generically good, but not something I couldn't live without.  Based on this review, I'm guessing that Westerberg probably wasn't too far off the mark.  And I can really see Paul Westerberg trying to kick Ryan Adams' teeth in, too. 11:01:31 AM    Say what?[]

The Diebold Scheme More fun with internal Diebold memos.  To recap, Diebold is one of the three companies that makes the electronic voting machines which are being hailed by politicians as the panacea for our Voting Boo Boos of 2000.  Unfortunately, there are lots of problems with the machines and the companies themselves.  The companies all have prominent ties to the GOP, and in Diebold's case the CEO has been very outspoken about "helping Ohio deliver it's electoral votes to Bush next year", not to mention that the top 11 Diebold executives have made contributions to the GOP. But hey, no law against corporate types being politically involved, right.  No, the larger problem with Diebold concers how they let people access (or not access) their data.  Check out this piece in the The Register.  It seems that California and other states are starting to mandate that there be an audit trail.  Imagine that, an audit trail for votes cast in an election.  It's madness!  Anyway, Diebold doesn't care for that idea, and so their strategy is to make the printers to print out the results exorbitantly expensive, so that people will be discouraged from buying them.  Check out the internal links to the Diebold emails.  Naturally, it's a huge shock that the best reporting on this comes from the UK.  What liberal media, indeed. Thanks to Scott F. for the head's up on this... 10:44:01 AM    Say what?[]

What's David Brooks' Problem With Dean? The NY Times' David Brooks writes a scathing review of Howard Dean's speech yesterday.  As I said yesterday, I'm far from a Dean supporter at this point (though I'm warming up to him).  But as I read Brooks' column, I guess I don't find a single damn thing of substance in there.  It's basically one long primal scream, long on critique and embarrassingly short on anything resembling justification or explanation.  Brooks' main point of contention is that Bush sees the world as it really is, a place where there are too many differences between the U.S. and everyone else for us to effectively work with international bodies, whereas Dean's idea of working with international bodies is a pollyanna-ish fairy tale.  I strenuously disagree with Brooks' conclusion.  What's more, I guess I just expect better writing from the NYT Op-Ed page. 10:32:33 AM    Say what?[]

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