Category: Words

I have decided that my blogshares investment strategery is to buy only blogs that I actually like. I don’t care if it’s popular and likely to become more so, only whether I like it. rc3.org is such a blog: intelligent and nuanced and readable.

One of the first things that Daria and I found that we had in common was that we both liked Nicholson Baker. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he’d gone to our college. I hadn’t read all of his stuff, and for some reason never got around to reading a favorite of hers, Room Temperature, until this week. It’s about a man giving his infant daughter a bottle and his thoughts of love and intimacy. There’s this whole part about how he was living in Boston and visiting her at school near Philadelphia, and it talks about the appreciation of style and color he learned from her and helping her decorate her apartment in Ardmore. He goes over all their pet names, their arguments, their desire to know what the other is thinking and understand the other, the paths of action and decision and chance that brought them together and kept them there.

Obviously, I’ve given up about twenty pages in.

The Weavers had a line about getting up in the morning and reading the obituary section in the newspaper: “and if I’m not there, I know I’m not dead, so I roll myself over and go back to bed.”

Fives, from Kung Fu Grippe has a rather different set of obituary requirements, like “there will be no use of the phrase ‘looking down on us.'” Of course, I think that Kitty Winn at Vomitola really would prefer to be described as “looking down on us” no matter what. I mean, if it’s accurate now, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be accurate after she dies.

“You know, I hear a lot of talk, so I’m headed for the stereo store, to get a white noise maker and turn it up to ten.” –Frank Black, “White Noise Maker,” Teenager of the Year

“The president doesn’t have time to listen to what the president doesn’t want to hear.” — White House Press Secretary and lying pigdog Ari Fleischer, explaining that good planning is unpatriotic.

There is a proposed Congressional Edict of Prayer and Fasting. Right, right, right. While we’re at it, why not have a burnt offering to please the lord and give us favorable wind when we set sail for Troy?

I hope this is a joke. I really do.

If the domestic perspective seems a little right-of-center to you, and you want to know what people with other biases have to say, you could do worse than the English Al Jazeera, translations of the prime regional media outlet. Other sources include the Arabic News, which as far as I can tell is an online-only regional news site with content translated from the Arabic, in contrast to the Arab News, which is a Saudi-based English-language print paper with a web presence.

My conclusion is that we’re not going to see really cool-headed analysis for at least fifty or a hundred years. Read the protestor’s account and especially the comments at the end, which vary from “those fascist pigs!” to “you fucking hippies!” and tell me we’re not polarized here.

A friend pointed me to a carefully written, well-balanced article about the war and the left. It hurts that it is such a rare thing to see a journalist really consider an issue like this, with really legitimate pro and con arguments: is the suffering of war greater than, or less than, the suffering of the citizens of Iraq?

The author has a really good point: this is the one of the most difficult cases since Stalin– it’s not clear-cut like a lot of the others were. But you don’t see a lot of acknowledgement of complexity at all. Maybe I’m suffering from lone moderate syndrome, but I’m much more used to seeing the clueless sort of protestor. And what could be more evocative of current politics than a guy who chains himself to the wrong building?

Could be worse. You could be the Slut of Ronkonkoma.

MSNBC/Newsweek says “Donald Rumsfeld often quotes a line from Al Capone: ‘You will get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.’” It’s a good point, really. But the problem is, we’ve been skimping on the “kind words” part…

Has anyone seen a credible critique of the Bush policy from the right? My feeling is that those who fail to line up 100% behind the prez are exiled and have their conservative credentials stripped, and that therefore, by definition, you can’t find one. But I’d like to see it. There’s a lot of people now who regard themselves as “balking hawks:” anti-Saddam, uncomfortable with unilateralism, distrustful of Bush, in favor of war only with UN backing, etc.

Those of you who enjoy my more pretentious moments may also like D-Square Digest, an economics oriented site with well reasoned, clearly thought-out analysis of things ranging from war (obviously, who isn’t talking about it now?) to, on the economic theories behind Ezra Pound’s Canto XLV. Another obvious choice is Pedantry, a journal full of of, well, pedantry. Highly readable.

What is it legal to write about other people? It varies, obviously, from country to country. US-wise, there’s a good libel and slander definition and backgrounder over at the Libel Defense Resource Center, as well as one with some international comments at the UH communications school.

The ‘Lectric Law Library has what appears to be a rather old British definition, including examples such as “denying the truth of the Christian religion” and defining it to be any insult which may provoke someone to revenge. Seems that libel law was originally designed to prevent feuds and duelling.

In the US, libel is defined as written defamation, and slander is spoken or gestured defamation. And what, pray tell, makes up defamation? For starters, the speaker or writer must know that the statement is untrue or at the very least have a “reckless disregard for the truth.” When made of public figures, defamatory statements are defined not just as knowingly false, but made with actual harmful intent, such as trying to screw someone out of a job, a raise, or an election.

What does that mean? Well, merely insulting or offending someone is not a crime. Telling the truth or stating an opinion is never a crime. In the case of a public figure, making an honest mistake or even a willing distortion is not a crime. It’s illegal to make false accusations about someone in order to get them fired. Conducting a smear campaign against a politician is a crime, provided that they are innocent and you know it. For example, it’s perfectly fine to accuse Bill Clinton of murdering dozens of people, as long as you have all the analytical skills of a pile of rocks.

My question: who’s a public figure these days?