BuzzMachine

More media
: Will Vehrs takes me to task for my conclusion on media bias (below) and he’s right that I’m answering one ludicrious oversimplification (liberal media bias) with another (liberal stoicism v. conservative paranoia). But it’s so much fun, Will. And the conservatives are always baiting the liberals, sometime’s it’s fun for the fish to go fishing, too.

PC set in stone
: Both Thomas Nephew and Tunku Varadarajan take the other side in the debate over the WTC flag statue (in which, you’ll recall, Steven Den Beste complained about plans to turn the three firefighters in the famous photo into an ethnically diverse bunch). Today’s contrarians argue that statues are symbolic and so they should be representative of the department rather than the photo.

Ah, but there are the rubs: Once you start mucking with reality, you get in trouble: Who’s to say what this mix should be? Why just men? Why not women? African American? Hispanic? Asian? Arab? Where does this end?

And once you start mucking with art, you also get in trouble, too. You can’t create art according to quotas. You can’t create art by committee. You can’t create art according to a list of PC rules. Then it isn’t art. Then it’s a mess. I have this same problem in the entertainment busienss: Telling movie or TV or novel writers that they should be giving us X percent more women or black or gay or Hispanic characters is absurd; writers write what they should write, what they know, what they feel, what they need to say, not what someone else thinks they should say. You can’t tell Richard Pryor to have more whites or Jerry Seinfeld more blacks — or start requiring sermons about drugs or smoking or the poor or whatever the cause de la moment happens to be — just because you think they should. Then it’s not their art.

So when it comes to this statue there is a clear and simple choice: Either (1) recreate the photo and the memories it instills in all of us OR (2) create a more abstract, representative memorial that evokes the character and heroism of the entire department. But don’t try to smoosh both together. It ruins both. It’s not art. It’s not reality. It’s not a memory. It’s not a memorial. It’s a mess.

: Photo info here. Note that the paper that owns the picture is stopping people from putting it on T-shirts and even cookbooks (?). They’re right to do so.

Good move
: Kevin Whited’s Reductio ad absurdum has moved to a new address and a new format that is even more satisfying than the last.

Pretzel nightmares
: Seriously, what would have happened if the President had died from a pretzel? No joke. We have endured an attack from terrorists and a war and a near economic collapse and the head of the Western world — hell, all the world — is taken down by a damned pretzel?!? Imagine the impact on the economy, worldwide. Imagine a snickering Osama. Imagine the shame. This can’t happen. It damned near did.

We need systems to monitor the commander in chief: He has to be with someone and when he’s not, he has to wear a remote monitor that checks on his heart and breathing. And I don’t just mean Bush, I mean all presidents. This is a matter of national security in all senses of the word. No joke.

Does size matter?
: Glenn Reynolds, in his argument that blogs help cause a media reformation, reminds us that the legendary Izzy Stone was about as influential as a journalist gets with a newsletter that served only 1,500 or so subscribers.

I’ve had to remind myself of this, too. On one end of the scale, I used to write for People and TV Guide, serving audiences of up to 25 million. That made a blog audience look small and me even smaller. But then I looked out one Sunday on the congregation of my little church, where lots of people devote their hearts and, yes, souls to serving an audience of about 100. The older, bigger churches around us serve a couple of hundred. Well, our congregations in the Church of the Holy Blog are many times that. And that made me feel better.

Influence never equals audience size; neither does attention. Fewer people go see every movie in every theater in the country all week long than go to a hot sitcom, yet movies get far more attention (and respect). Books get tiny audiences next to even a cable show or radio show but books get the heat. Blogs may be small but they are getting more respect by the day. Size doesn’t always matter.

Media more
: I got lots of good letters on media bias Ray Eckhart, Kathy Shaidle, and a guy named Bruce about media bias (below) and Rand Simberg and Duncan Fitzgerald take me on, too. If I weren’t tech-crazed moving to my new domain from Blogspot, I’d create a letters page and show them to you. But I’m tired and so I’ll unfairly and inaccurately summarize instead (demonstrating my own media bias, of course). They say that the bias hounds are merely arguing that most reporters are liberal, rather than being part of liberal cabal.

But I still say that is an indication of a conspiracy mentality, of paranoia.

I still say that is a simplistic view of the world that does not take into account the intelligence, sincerity, professionalism, independence, and stubbornness of both reporters and their audiences. It is essentially insulting to both.

It is an assumption without basis.

Which leads me to another old-war-horse story. When I was a columnist in San Francisco — and, as a columnist, I was allowed to have opinions — I covered then-Mayor Feinstein when she took office in the horrible days after the Jonestown massacre and the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. I think that Feinstein did a great job and often said so. But once in a while, I did criticize her for a specific action or statement and whenever I did, she declared that I was her enemy. There was no gray there, only allies or enemies. She and her husband even complained to the then-publisher of the paper about me. And I supported her! But to her, criticism was a sure sign of my enemy status. Or is that liberal bias?

Face it: The media were a helluva lot tougher on Clinton and Carter than on Reagan or Bush I or Bush II. The media neighborhood is crowded with conservative bastions once you get past the NY Times and Washington Post: Tribune Company, Dow Jones, Time Inc., News Corp., Hearst, to name a few. And look here on the Internet where most of the blog-talk I’m hearing is conservative. The media are chock full of conservatives. But you don’t hear liberals whining about that. You only hear conservatives whining.

In the end, liberal media bias is still a conspiracy theory and it is born out of one simple fact:

Conservatives are by nature paranoid.

Moving day approaches
: Here’s the deal: I’m going to double-publish for a few days but then cut off to http://www.buzzmachine.com; go there and bookmark now, if you’d be so kind. I’ll leave the old stuff on Blogspot for any old links to old posts. The archive pages will be at buzzmachine. I hope this works!

Media bias? That assumes media efficiency
: There’s been a zeppelin’s worth of hot air being manufactured lately about the alleged media bias; this weekend’s warm wind brought with it Andrew Sullivan weighing in on Bernard Goldberg’s bitter ex-employee expose.

As a practitioner of both old and new media, I’m amused by all the bluster on the topic.

I don’t buy the contention that there is concerted media bias for one simple reason: The media are not that well-organized.

To believe that there is media bias, you have to believe that the media are well-managed and that reporters and editors take management well. Both assumptions are laughably wrong.

In my 30 years in the business (ouch, that hurts to calculate; I started very young), I’ve worked for allegedly liberal and conservative publishers — Time Inc., TV Guide and News Corp., the San Franciscso Examiner and Hearst, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, most of them usually accused of leaning right (my present company excepted from analysis).

And I have to say that only once — once — have I ever seen an attempt to influence my work or those around me politically. That one incident occurred on behalf of Whittaker Chambers and Richard Nixon, hardly left-wing heroes. And the motivation wasn’t really political; it was personal. When I started criticizing TV for People magazine, I gave a glowing review to the miniseries Concealed Enemies about the Alger Hiss case. In it, I said that Hiss-hunter Chambers came off like doughy dope. The then-top editor in Time Inc. — whose mentor at Time happened to be none other than Chambers — with the help of his right-hand henchman, tried to rewrite my review entirely, making it a negative review (though they’d never seen the show) and inserting right-wing bias aplenty. I threatened to quit and my editor, the sainted Pat Ryan, stood by me. The boss backed down and I won. Bias erased. When I created Entertainment Weekly at the same company, some of the same players (all gone now) tried to get us to be nicer to entertainment product just as Time Inc. became Time Warner, an entertainment company. This time, I did quit, But that wasn’t political (beyond corporate politics, that is).

My point is that journalistic integrity — or bias — is the product of the consciences of individuals far more than of the conspiracies of institutions. Individual writers and editors have to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning and make their own judgments, some good, some bad. And it is not easy to tell these people what to do; I know, I’ve been a top editor at some of these companies; reporters are stubborn passive aggressives, every one. Beyond that, if you are a media executive and you tried to inject bias, you stand the immediate risk of exposure, for reporters are also gossips by nature.

I’ve not read Goldberg’s book but I have to wonder (a) why he didn’t cause a stink at the time and (b) why it took so long to cause it.

So I find all this as boring and out-of-touch as an Oliver Stone movie. There is no great media bias conspiracy any more than there is a government conspiracy to hush-up UFOs; the government isn’t that well-organized, either.

The truth is that everyone — reporters, editors, executives, newsmakers, and most especially readers — has a perspective (a nicer word than bias) and inevitably view the world through or around that perspective. That is not bias. That is the free give-and-take of democracy and individual expression.

So just as I decry the PC fundamendalists, I decry the MB (media bias) inquisitors; they all assume that we, the audience, we the people, are too stupid to be able to judge on our own what is true and what is sensible and what we believe. That is a bias shared by the media and anti-media alike, by left and right alike; that is an undemocratic and essentially insulting bias.

But I have some hope that Blogdom is inching us past that, for on blogs, individuals’ perspectives are easy to spot (I certainly know where Sullivan stands) and the accusations of bias or stupidity or just sloppiness in the media are less sweeping and more detailed (and even joyous as a blogger cuts apart the latest dispatch from this columnist or that). Blogdom is a disorganized collection of individuals keeping watch on the media and each other and so far, it works pretty well.

But I know it won’t be long before someone accuses us all of left-wing or right-wing blog bias.

(And just to prove that I have absolutely no bias, I won’t make a single Presidential pretzel joke today. Not one. Besides, Tim Blair has plenty already.)

The stripped-down business model
: Off topic: The Donkey leads us to news that an Internet company coming out of bankruptcy plans to buy Howard Stern’s favorite strip club, Scores, and make it national. Now that’s a business.

Pssst. Instapundit sent me
: Click here for the end of the PC era.

Death or Cuba
: You think the Afghan prisoners in Cuba have it tough? Ha! Afghanistan now says it would execute even bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

PC set in stone
: Tim Blair takes the PC statue ruccus (below) to the next step, with his nominations for liberals in relief, e.g., Keiko the killer whale, some crack babies, and a Chevrolet Corvair or Diana, Princess of Wales, Enron, and the ozone layer. .

Video
: I’ve just watched a remarkable video, WTC: the first 24 hours, shot by cameraman Etienne Sauret with no narration or added sound; it needs none. The film begins with a limited view through a window of the first tower on fire and the second tower exploding in flame and then each tower collapsing. Next, we see what Sauret’s camera sees at the World Trade Center and in the streets around, day and night: the billions of papers that survived and covered the ground, the cars overturned and burned, the enormity of the pile of debris. But what’s most striking are the faces of the rescuers, shocked and disbelieving. The film ends with a lone rescuer climbing a pile of debris, shouting out, “Hello?”

I got the DVD version at the Here Is New York gallery when I picked up the last of the photos I ordered there. Unfortunately, I can’t find any information on ordering the film on the web site and the gallery is essentially shut up now, looking to reopen soon. I recommend it. HBO or PBS would be smart to air it.

: At the same time, I do not know why we are being protected from seeing another video shot by a French cameraman, Jules Naudet, from the lobby of the World Trade Center even as one of the towers collapsed. The New York Times reports that the video is making the rounds of firehouses and the filmmaker wants to create a documentary for the families of victims. I cannot see why we also cannot view the film. In some odd ways, it helps to see the unbelievable nature of what happened that day so we can believe it again ourselves. I urge that it be edited and shown.

Aw, those poor widdle tewwowists
: We’re seeing a lot of whining about the terror prisoners now in Cuba, the latest, of course in the Observer. I’ll give you any odds they are living better now than they did in Osama’s caves: three meals, plumbing, heat. They’re terrorists. We should treat them civilly because we are civilized but beyond that, don’t stretch my sympathy; there is none there.

: The official U.S. story here.

: The official Afghan story here: “The policy of my government will be to agree to the thinking and the decisions made by the government of the United States.” Smart.

Why I like the Post PC era
: The other day, I declared this the Post-PC era (marked by the advertising of Paula Zahn’s alleged sex appeal) and now, in the posts below, I find more sacred cows are becoming fair game (ok, cows aren’t game but, hell, it’s Saturday morning…). So I am inspired to sermonize briefly on this momentous event.

I welcome the Post PC era with with trumpets. Political Correctness is essentially undemocratic; it assumes that we are all too fragile to endure the open and frank debate that democracy demands; it assumes that offense is the greatest sin; it brings us all to a lowest common denominator of gagged silence. I hate how this came to become a prerequisite to being liberal; it’s not. Political correctness is a form of political fundamentalism, an attempt to impose an orthodoxy without open debate, an attempt to legislate civilized behavior according to a list of rules handed down by the political priesthood — telling you all the things you can’t say — rather than according to intelligence and maturity just common sense of all of us. It is possible to be liberal without being politically correct and it’s time for sensible liberals to stand up to this fundamentalism — just as it’s time for sensible religious believers of any brand to stand up to religious fundamentalism.

When I was a TV critic, I made this same argument about the taste and intelligence of us, the masses. If you don’t believe we’re essentially smart — if you think that you have to tell us all how to behave and that we’re unable to think for ourselves and that we have to be protected because we’re unable to defend our own ideas and choices — then you essentially do not believe in democracy or capitalism.

I’m a big Howard Stern fan because he’s unafraid to be honest, he will say what any of us are thinking about any sacred cow, from sex to race to politics to religion. It is time for a new era of honesty.

Post PC I
: When the NY Fire Department decided to make a memorial inspired by the famous photo of New York’s Bravest raising a flat over the rubble of the World Trade Center, they decided to ethnically diversivy the firemen (what, no firewomen?). Steven Den Beste finds this news and finds it appalling.

More Post PC II
: In the Baltimore City Paper, Keith A. Owens, who’s black, writes about being asked whether black people “feel more relieved and less under the gun after the Sept. 11 tragedy because now the pressure is off us and on the Arabs. In other words, are Arabs the new niggers?” After an obligatory paragraph explaining his use of that word, he says his brother-in-law finds white women don’t clutch their purses around him and white men want to shake his hand because, “They know I’m not going to blow anything up.”

If he didn’t know any better my brother-in-law would have made the mistake of thinking that he had finally arrived. He was now on the good list. Screw those Arabs. Hell, they don’t like black folks anyway. After all this time of being given the nigger treatment, isn’t it good to see someone else catch a few licks? And don’t they deserve it?

But here’s the thing: If the Arabs are the new niggers, then are we crazy enough to believe that America is now a better place to live for the “former niggers”? And who will the next niggers be? Is this how to move ahead in America?

[via Utne]

More Post PC III
: Instapundit decries newspaper editing of Tommy, an “abused, physically challenged” kid who plays a mean pinball.

More Post PC IV
: Glenn Reynolds weighs in from campus:

Funny, I was discussing with a colleague the other day the Ally McBealization of our female law students: leather pants and pierced-belly-button-baring sweaters are unremarkable now, where they would have been utterly unthinkable on female law students just a few years ago. (And it must have Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin seething.) I do think that there’s a change in the wind. We have a long way to go, but things are certainly different.

I’d be quite curious to hear the good professor’s take on the PC atmosphere on campus now. I’d bet that society is about a decade ahead here; the whole hooha at Harvard lately is demonstration of that.

Gay Afghanistan
: An amazing story in the Times of London on the reemergence of gay life in Afghanistan after the Taliban.

Kandaharís Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.

It is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy ó locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior ó that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taleban.

An audio narrative of Sept. 11
: I decided to record my story of Sept. 11 one last time, telling the fuller story and telling it in audio. Every time I have told more of my memories, I’ve heard from people in email and on other blogs who’ve told me to keep giving witness; people come to read it. And so, before I forgot the details, I decided to try to record it but this time in audio instead of type. This could be a really bad idea — bad Spalding Gray — but I thought I’d try. Let me know what you think. Here is the link to six brief (small as possible but, unfortunately, still not small) MP3 files.

Four months after: A suitable memorial, a proper use
: So what should be done at the World Trade Center? Rudy Guliani says the site should become nothing but a memorial. Mike Bloomberg says it should have a memorial and other building. I agree with Bloomberg: We need a mix of rebuilding and remembrance. We need renewal.

Hardly anyone is arguing anymore for re-creating the twin towers. Who would rent up there? Who would visit up there? My worst chills after Sept. 11 still come not from remembering being underground every day but from being on top, on the roof, with my child, many months before the attack. I wouldn’t go up there again. We don’t need the towers back. No, we need moderation now, a proper use.

But we do need to rebuild. We need to bring life back to the site. And life, in New York, means business and commerce and culture. We need offices for the sake of the New York economy and because work is how we live. We need commerce to bring people and normalcy; we have to be able to live our lives there once again. We need culture because that is a part of New York and it would be a proper gift to a neighborhood that needs the attention.

And, of course, we need a memorial. It is too soon, far too soon, to draw the outline of that memorial. If we created it today, our memorial would be filled with too much sadness or too much bravado or worse, both: tears on top of tacky statues. Time will give us the right balance of mourning the deaths and celebrating the lives, of sadness and pride, of the past and the future.

As a lasting memorial, I envision a place where people can come and spend time and on a day like Sept. 11, 2001 — in the minutes before our world changed, when the air was as clear as a mountaintop’s, and the sun was bright and sharp, and the sky was blue and hopeful — we can enjoy the peace and reflect and remember the people: the tremendous heroism of the day. I don’t want to see the word “victim.”

I think we should start with a blank slate, just space, as we plan the renewal: a temporary memorial that lives in our minds until we build the physical one.

And in that time, while we plan, we should bring the shame of the city down upon those who are trying to exploit this place and its tragedy and turn it into a place for tourism and crass commerce and emotional voyeurism. I don’t much like the platform and the gawking that comes with it. I am offended by the city’s efforts to drive the people who come there across town so they will shop on the way. I abhore the Ground Zero hats and terror tchotchkes. This is holy ground and we should treat it as such. Besides, there’s really nothing to see there now; it is a hole in the city. I understand people wanting to be near. But we must treat it with respect until we can renew the place and our lives there.

Dreams
: Andrew Sullivan nya-nyas Tina Brown’s Talk, saying he has as many visits as she has subscribers and doesn’t lose $55 million getting them. “And people think that Internet media is an old story? Itís only just beginning.” If only he convince advertisers of that — on behalf of all Internet media. Sullivan does brag he’ll make money this year and that is something to brag about. Meanwhile, Natalie Solent beats the micropayments drum. And I had lunch with Nick Denton today hatching and cracking other schemes. There’s no question this new thing is powerful. The question is: How can it be profitable?