Plus, from the comments: “I don’t want to hear one more word about Tea Parties that create an atmosphere of violence.”
I know Meade and I exemplify Glenn's concept of "An Army of Davids," but we kind of got drafted. Here we are in Madison, Wisconsin and something big happens. We have to cover it. Or we'd have to justify dodging the draft into the army of Davids. And now that we're in, people are looking to us to be the rough men who stand ready to do journalism on their behalf so they can read peaceably on their laptops at night.
And now we're into the third week of it. It's become a quagmire. I believe myself that... this protest is lost and it is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme aggression in Madison yesterday....
"... posted a video in which he accused the police department of a conspiracy and lambasted the current media organization landscape. In the video (which, in bizarro world, is shown every hour on Fox News), Meade gets in the face of the police and demands entry, claiming he isn't media: 'I'm private media.'"
Writes The Awl. I think he said "new media." And no one calls him "Larry." You'd get a better response with "Lore." Which I don't call him either. Frankly, I'm not sure what to call him. Except "Meade" — "New Media Meade."
The irony of denying Althouse's husband access to the capitol without official media credentials is that the credentialed media has done a pathetic job of covering the events. Outside Wisconsin's own official news organs, the nationals' approach to covering the protests borders on malpractice. When Paul Krugman is bothered to get into the Times CMS to post "a blog" comparing the job you've done in Wisconsin to the one you did in the buildup to the Iraq War, well, you've done a pretty bad job.
If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news' partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point.
But, hey, guess what? Governor Scott Walker is about to give his budget address, and Meade is there, seated in the chamber as I write this. I could have been there too, but I've got a class at 4:30, and we need to talk about the Commerce Clause.
ADDED: Here's the video referred to above. And in the comments, JAL says, "Woo hoo! Reminds me of a book some guy from Knoxville wrote ... uummm ... It had a militaristic tone to it ... (you know those "conservative" right wing blogger gun nuts ...) ... uhmmm ... An Army of Meades!" Oh, yes. They'd look like this. You know they came from a place called Media.
The police want to make ordinary people wait in line, while media gets right in. Meade says he's "new media." He's with "the Althouse blog." And watch for the indications that the police are on the protesters' side.
"All these people have decided that they are working with us to help with their protest. We're not keeping..."
"You're helping the protesters?
"We're not keeping you from protesting. We're helping to keep the peace."
Note that John Hawks is at the University of Wisconsin—Madison (where I am), which made this other segment — "Does academic blogging fit a university’s mission?" — especially interesting to me. According to Hawks, the UW has always been especially savvy about the value of blogging professors. And here's Hawks's blog. (Did you know it's "Darwin Day" here on campus today and also Friday and Saturday? I guess the commitment to science represented by the celebration of Darwin doesn't exclude calling 3 days a "day.")
That's the subject line on email just sent to me and other bloggers to inform us of an article in a left-wing newspapers about the how right-wing bloggers dealt with the Hu Jintao visit to the White House.
The celebrity PR people love the extra-nice blogger, who apparently gets invited everywhere (and makes millions). The blogger's name is Jared Eng, and the blog is called Just Jared. Man, I was just thinking about how nobody's going to use the name Jared anymore. Before the recent massacre, Jared was a good new baby name, likely to be chosen by parents attracted to the ultra-popular "J" names — Jacob, Joshua, Justin — and wanting to get a bit more unusual. But, post-massacre, there's a new thirst for syrup...
[M]ore than a few publicists have taken to nicknaming Mr. Eng the “nice Perez Hilton”...
“I don’t throw anyone under the bus,” he said. “It’s all objective and/or positive.”...
Mr. Eng had a very sheltered childhood, growing up in Fresh Meadows, Queens, the third oldest among five boys. His Chinese-American parents raised him strictly, limiting his television diet to 30 minutes per week....
30 minutes! Outrageous slacking! Somebody call Amy Chua! That boy's a disgrace!
I'm surprised that slipped my mind. Maybe because I turned 60 on the 12th. And I don't mean I'm getting old and therefore forgetful. I just got distracted by the big 0 birthday. Anyway, I'm getting in under the wire here in the Central Time Zone.
The blog is 7 years old today.
AND: I should note, once again, that I have posted every single day — including weekends, holidays, etc. — in each of the 7 years.
Great 7-minute video showing how the wonderful fashion blogger wanders the streets looking for people dressed in a way he wants to show us and how he approaches them about being the subject of his photography. His seemingly candid shots are not taken by surprise. He asks. At 2:25, there's a perfect demonstration of how to obtain permission from a stranger. I'm going to use that!
ADDED: The Sartorialist — using almost no words, only photographs of real people — teaches us far more about what is stylish, what will be stylish, what is good in fashion, and what we should like in fashion than any mainstream fashion magazine. It's truly brilliantly done, and the video shows how the Sartorialist — Scott Schuman — works on natural instinct — and that is, I think, the key to blogging. It's what distinguishes blogging from journalism: the feeling of being in direct contact with a real and distinctive person.
IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin sends us to his "sartorial commentary":
Start a blog right there. That's the basis of the first post. Then continue in the "anti-sartorial" vein.
"Althouse has been writing a popular eponymous blog since 2004, where she posts photographs along with biting commentary on law, politics and pop-culture. Her site, which promises to eat 'intellectually inert brats for lunch' attracts 500,000 monthly visitors, including some suitors. In 2009, Althouse made headlines in the blogosphere and even The New York Times after announcing her engagement to a commentator she met through her blog. Who needs dating sites?"
If you comment on an older post — over 2 weeks old — or if Blogger thinks it's seeing spam, your comment won't go up until I moderate it. I need to do that every day, at least once, and it had slipped my mind. Sorry. Keep commenting. And feel free to prompt me by email if something seems to have fallen through the cracks. The moderation I'm doing is solely about blocking spam.
Remember, to qualify as a conservative blogress diva, a nominee need only be a strong woman who commands the respect of gay male conservatives. She need not be conservative herself.
I'm surprise to even see that I wrote this. Man, nobody called me on that, back when I was a big 1-issue voter in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race. Looking at the comments over on that first post, I'm thinking maybe you guys flipped me!
Who wrote that? I asked aloud. Meade guessed the name of one of our regular commenters.
I laughed. "Emerson! You know why I'm reading that? I'm reading this letter to the editor of the New York Times from 1853, and the reason I'm reading it is that I did an archive search — you can go back to 1851 in the archives — for 'facetious' and 'bowers,' because I was looking for that quote in the law case Bowers v. Hardwick that uses the word 'facetious,' which is something I wanted for that post about argument by laughter."
Thereupon, I read the verbose and goofily palpitating paean to nature that begins "I have a penchant for grass and trees. A facetious friend intimates, it is on account of some natural affinity — mentioning a certain color by way of illustration." And so forth. The word "bowers" is in there:
Oh! happy is the man that has many of these spots to dream over, when the real of existence becomes too real! I have a few, and they are bowered with holy feeling — as beautiful and beloved as nests of singing larks in bowers of roses.
Oh, well, okay... I think I know what you're saying in that crazy-ass pre-Civil War way. The temperature has shot up to 10° here in the northland. I don't know if the real of existence becomes too real here at my desk with my computer-screen view of the internet and my peripheral view of a wall of windows looking out onto the "liberal space" of Madison, Wisconsin. I don't think it will be such a dreamy escape from the real to go out there, but we will. It's time for that. When I'm trying to write about law and sodomy and laughing and I tumble back into 1853, the pine trees are waving to us.
[Len] Audaer's ordeal began on October 15, 2010, when he was summoned to a meeting with SUCOL Associate Professor of Law Gregory Germain due to "extremely serious" charges. In the meeting, held on October 18, Audaer learned that the charges involved "harassment" for his alleged involvement with SUCOLitis. The anonymous, satirical blog attributed obviously fake quotes to SUCOL students, faculty, and staff. The blog included a disclaimer stating, "No actual news stories appear on the site."
So the blog names students and quotes them saying things that they did not say, and the idea is, it's satire and everyone should know that the quotes are fake. But how would you feel — in a tough job market — knowing prospective employers will Google your name and see that quote?
This is similar to a problem I have had with the blog Sadly, No!, which allows commenters to use my name and comment, pretending to be me. I complained, because I don't want my name attached to quotes that aren't mine, and the answer was that readers know it's satire.
Not all readers pick up on satire. (Remember Fox Nation picking up an Onion story about Obama and presenting it as news?) And satire usually has some element of truth in it. A real individual — especially a student who is looking for a job — has to worry about what people will think. And when readers enter a blog because they've Googled a name, they may not stay around long enough to absorb the context. If non-idiots can make a mistake about The Onion, which is a well-known and well-done satire, I would have even more anxiety about an obscure and possibly not-very-well-written satirical blog.
SUCOLitis aspires to be something like The Onion of law-school life. The Syracuse, N.Y., satirical news blog has attracted thousands of views with fake headlines about beer pong, third-year students serving burritos, and the election of the university’s “sexiest Semite.” It delights in attributing fake quotes to students and faculty, as well as to famous alumni like Vice President Joe Biden, who is quoted as calling SUCOLitis “even funnier than me.”
Syracuse University officials aren’t laughing....
A spokeswoman for the law school, Jaclyn D. Grosso, won’t discuss details of the case. In an e-mail, she tells Wired Campus only that a faculty prosecutor has been appointed to investigate claims that a student violated the code of conduct, and to file a charge if appropriate.
She adds, “According to the faculty prosecutor, a motion has been filed with the hearing panel for a protective order to prevent public disclosure of the names of the students, faculty, and staff who were targeted in the blog, or who testify in the case, unless they consent to have their names disclosed. This was done to protect their privacy rights.”
I'd really like more information about this case, and the law school is suppressing it — apparently in order to protect the students who worry that their reputations are suffering injury. The blog is no longer public, so I can't see what kinds of fake quotes were used and how obviously satirical the writing was. Free speech is important, and I'm suspicious of charges of "harassment," but defamation is different. If you report that a person said something they didn't say, that can be seen as a lie.
Here's a hypothetical: A satirical blog aggressively goes after an individual law student, attributing all sorts of damaging quotes to him: confessions to drug use, cheating on exams, and plans to sexually harass co-workers instead of getting any work done if he gets that job at the law firm. Imagine a satirical blog, written anonymously by another student who's interviewing for the same job. You see the point.
And by the way, to be admitted to the bar, your need to pass a character review.
