'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Are Bloggers Journalists?
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater podcasts
Gearing up for the GOP Convention
Here in Minneapolis, the political season is winding up. We had our caucuses. They didn't mean much, but we had our say. Full results, unofficial tally from the Secretary of State: Sen. Barack Obama won on the Democratic Party side, Mitt Romney won on the Republican Party side, nobody voted for an Independence Party or Green Party candidates, and Obama took the smattering of Constitution Party votes.
I voted in the Democratic caucus... or at least the presidential preference ballot preceding the caucus itself. It was crowded and exciting. I didn't stick around for the long process of electing delegates.
The political parties have a longer process at the state conventions, then a state primary to determine the candidates. Still, the fun part will be the Republican National Convention, held this year in St. Paul Sept. 1-4. I intend to cover the event, either as an independent or an accredited journalist.
The process to get a press pass, which I haven't started yet, should be interesting.
Are bloggers journalists?
No.
That is, merely typing on the internet does not inherently make one a competent reporter. Anyone can start up a magazine or a newspaper, but publishing does not inherently make you a journalist. The medium does not make the profession.
To be sure, some people who blog deserve press credentials. They have proven themselves, over time, to be observers and reporters. In today's conservative climate, journalism is in such sorry state that one can't assume that a "reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper" is in any way good at what they do. Too many are not reporters, they are propagandists. Or incompetent reporters. Either way, they shouldn't get press passes. Some bloggers are good reporters, and deserve access to the convention.
I hope to be one of these. I'm not a blogger, though I have blogged, but I do consider myself a journalist. Part of the time, anyway. I have nearly 30 years as a radio host to my credit, and many of my political interviews are available online. My politics are public, and my interviews are also public: I tend to let people talk, and impress the listeners or dig their own grave as the case may be. I'll find the stories on the sidelines and cover the event from many unexpected angles.
Starting on Presidents Day. This date seems fitting to start the political process, at least on my end.
A Presidents Day Digression
As long as I'm on the subject of Presidents Day, let me talk a bit about my favorite president of the last 140 years: Theodore Roosevelt. Many people, especially Republicans, are surprised at this.
Teddy was a conservationist, a trust buster and a progressive. The environment is the most important issue of our day and he was prescient to be concerned a hundred years ago. Preventing huge monopolies helped the US become the economic superpower. (We were unquestionably #1 for most of the 20th century until Bush Lite started dismantling our economy.) Being progressive meant regulating food and drugs while promising a Square Deal for the average citizen as well as the businessman. His foreign policy is summed up in the phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far." (Big Stick Diplomacy was first introduced at the Minnesota State Fair, not too far from where the 2008 GOP Convention will make a platform of the exact opposite of this successful policy.)
So bully for you, Teddy. There hasn't been anyone like you, of either party, since. Here's hoping that our next president take inspiration from the chief executive 1901-1909, not 2001-2009.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
SUSAN ESTRICH: The Heat in the Kitchen (creators.com)
My friends who are also Hillary's friends, many of them classmates and fellow Wellesley women, keep e-mailing me about their concerns, not so much with the campaign, but with the outright meanness and hostility the media seem to be heaping on our friend. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it. Vicious doesn't begin to describe it.
Froma Harrop: Schemes We Have Seen (creators.com)
During the push to privatize Social Security, the idea's foes were accused of not trusting the American people to manage their own money. The naysayers prevailed, and aren't we glad.
Peter Schworm: College applications can be too good (boston.com)
Beware a slightly too-slick essay as part of your college entrance application. It may raise a DDI alert: "Daddy did it."
RICHARD ROEPER: Autograph OK after Regis -- not in Congress (suntimes.com)
Having just completed her guest stint on a taping of "Live with Regis and Kelly," Scarlett Johansson says goodbye to the audience and walks off.
DR. RALLIE MCALLISTER: Eating Breakfast Boosts Weight Loss Efforts (creators.com)
If you're skipping breakfast in an effort to slim down, you might want to rethink your weight loss strategy. A growing body of scientific evidence supports the notion that folks who routinely eat breakfast tend to be thinner - and healthier - than those who don't.
Mike Steinberger: The Greatest Wine on the Planet (slate.com)
HOW THE '47 CHEVAL BLANC, A DEFECTIVE WINE FROM AN ABERRANT YEAR, GOT SO GOOD.
Red Rocker: A Chat with Sheryl Crow (bullz-eye.com)
Sheryl Crow: I think definitely in the last, um, seven years this country has been taken on a massive detour, and we're gonna really have to figure out how to get back to who we are.
Nathan Lee: Vlogged to Death (villagevoice.com)
Romero and his zombies return to lambast the media. Plus: The truly and spectacularly horrifying Inside.
Roger Ebert: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962; A Great Movie)
At some point during this descent into madness, "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" stops becoming a "camp classic," which is how it's often described, and starts becoming the real thing, a psychological horror story.
Andy Capp
Rob's Gay Info
Hubert's Poetry Corner
Jane Fonda Plays TV Crass Word
Dabble in rabble scrabble?
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly sunny with a cold wind.
The computer is still crashing without warning and I'm getting a little flinchy.
Watch News Talkers 24/7
Pundit Police
Fewer than a half-million people were watching MSGOP when David Shuster made his comment that Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign had "pimped out" daughter Chelsea by having her make political phone calls.
Among them were monitors at Newsbusters. The Web site posted video of Shuster 10 minutes after the show was over, beginning a reaction that led to his two-week suspension.
Say something stupid, offensive or incorrect on television and you're going to hear about it - fast.
Web sites and bloggers record everything on news programs, an obsessive attention that can foster a hypersensitivity over words and deepen the nation's partisan divide. Without question, they remind pundits that it's important to think before they speak.
Pundit Police
Raises $42.5 Million For AIDS
Art Auction
An art auction conceived by U2 frontman and campaigner Bono together with British artist Damien Hirst raised 42.5 million dollars in New York late Thursday for UN-backed health programs in Africa.
The auction, which drew Hollywood celebrities, supermodels and rock stars, was described as the largest charity event ever mounted and would help keep thousands of AIDS patients on antiretroviral drugs for years to come.
Artists such as Georg Baselitz, Howard Hodgkin, Jasper Johns, Anish Kapoor and Jeff Koons contributed works for the red-themed Valentine's Day sale, which raised far more than the upper pre-sale estimate of 29 million dollars.
Proceeds from the sale, organized by Bono's charity organization (RED), were to go directly to the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs run by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Art Auction
Old Documents May Stir Controversy
JFK
A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday.
The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning.
The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president's death.
Also found were official records from Ruby's trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, District Attorney Craig Watkins told the newspaper.
JFK
Lackawanna County Questions
Paul Sorvino
First-time director Paul Sorvino doesn't understand why his investors are so jittery. More than two years ago, Lackawanna County agreed to partner with Sorvino on "The Trouble with Cali," an independent film the "GoodFellas" star is producing and directing in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Shot in the Scranton area in 2006, the low-budget movie has yet to hit theaters, prompting the cash-strapped county to ask Sorvino what he has done with its $500,000 investment.
Sorvino says he's happy to provide a full accounting of the money. But, he adds, elected officials don't necessarily have a good understanding of the movie business. And he resents any implication that he has been less than forthright.
"To have my honesty impugned has never happened in my life," the burly character actor said in a phone interview. "The record of how the money was spent was always available, to the penny."
"I have never done anything that I've been in charge of that has failed. I don't intend to make this the first one," Sorvino said. "It's a wonderful movie and I can't wait to get it out."
Paul Sorvino
Tax Dollars At Work
12 Bogus Companies
Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US Central Intelligence Agency set up 12 bogus companies in Europe and other parts of the world in the hope of penetrating Islamic organizations, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website late Saturday.
But citing current and former CIA officials, the newspaper said the agency had now shut down all but two of them after concluding they were ill-conceived.
The CIA-run "companies" were located far from Muslim enclaves in Europe and other targets, and their size raised concerns that one mistake would blow the cover of many agents, the report noted.
In addition, because businessmen don't usually come into contact with Al-Qaeda operatives, the cover didn't work, The Times said.
12 Bogus Companies
Vanity Plate Sold For $14 Million
UAE
A license plate with nothing but the number "1" on it went for a record $14 million at a charity auction Saturday.
Saeed Khouri, a member of a wealthy Abu Dhabi family, wouldn't say how many automobiles he owned or which of them might carry the record-breaking single-digit plate.
Ordinary automobile license plates issued to drivers here - and even most other vanity series plates - carry both Arabic and Western numerals and script, defining the issuing city and country.
Khouri's plate, however, has only the Western numeral and no letters.
UAE
Auctioned For $10.7M
301 Pennies
A penny saved is not necessarily just a penny earned: One man's collection of rare American cents has turned into a $10.7 million auction windfall.
The collection of 301 cents featured some of the rarest and earliest examples of the American penny, including a cent that was minted for two weeks in 1793 but was abandoned because Congress thought Lady Liberty looked frightened.
That coin and a 1794 cent with tiny stars added to prevent counterfeiters each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the Dallas-based auction house Heritage Auction Galleries, which held the sale in Long Beach on Friday night.
Heritage Auction president Greg Rohan said the auction was the biggest ever for a penny collection, with hundreds of bidders vying for the coins. Presale estimates valued the collection at about $7 million.
301 Pennies
Makes Its Own Electricity
Microfiber Fabric
U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power.
If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush.
One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity.
Microfiber Fabric
Weekend Box Office
'Jumper'
The globe-trotting thriller "Jumper" leaped to a box office win with $27.2 million on a weekend when Hollywood offered something for everyone, with new films for action fans, teens, family audiences and the date-movie crowd.
Debuting in second place was Disney's teen dance sequel "Step Up 2 the Streets," which pulled in $19.7 million for the weekend and $26.3 million since Thursday.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Tuesday.
1. "Jumper," $27.2 million.
2. "Step Up 2 the Streets," $19.7 million.
3. "The Spiderwick Chronicles," $19.1 million.
4. "Fool's Gold," $13.1 million.
5. "Definitely, Maybe," $9.7 million.
6. "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," $8.9 million.
7. "Juno," $4.6 million.
8. "The Bucket List," $4.1 million.
9. "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert," $3.3 million.
10. 27 Dresses," $3.2 million.
'Jumper'
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