Category Archives: Readings

Michael D. Birnhack & Niva Elkin-Koren, The Invisible Handshake: The Reemergence of the State in the Digital Envitonment, 8 Virginia J. of L. & T 6 (2003).

This is the sort of article that crystalizes a lot of things you maybe sorta half-knew or half-understood and puts them all together. It's about how the state was always there, even in the supposedly liberarian online environment, and how it turned to new gatekeepers and control nodes to remain dominant, taking advantage of the public/private distinction to use 'private' means to do things that would be much harder if attempted with 'public' tools.

I'm behind schedule on finishing a report, so blogging will be light until I'm done. Meanwhile, you might enjoy, as I did, Many-to-Many: Slashdot Troller and Social Antibodies. Like so much on the cool Corante site, it's interesting.

Bob Sommersby, the proprietor of the Daily Howler, couldn't be shriller: One question only, for the Washington Post: When will Charles Krauthammer be fired?. Below I'll quote a large chunk of his essay, which demonstrates that Sommersby is shrill for a reason: Krauthammer spliced two divergent quotes with an ellipsis in a manner that makes Howard Dean appear to say almost the exact opposite of what the full transcript suggests he said. (Then, for good measure, Krauthammer suggested Dean was delusional.)

The departure from basic journalistic ethics seems so clear, and the fault so egregious, that I called the Post's ombudsman to discuss it. Unfortunately, I called after 5pm on Friday, and just got voice mail. But I hope to have a chance to discuss it with him next early week. For one thing, I'm curious how much editing columnists are subject to.

My bet is that the Post will say the quotes are not really all that misleading, since Dean's stated desire to reduce media concentration might well effect Fox. I hope I'm wrong, because that would be flim-flam: saying that a candidate wants to break up Fox because he disagrees with it not only suggests the candidate lacks respect for the first amendment but basically paints him as a heavy-handed fascist who would use federal power to harry his ideological opponents. Saying the candidate wants a heightened anti-trust approach to media concentration regardless of ideology reveals a view that may or may not be good policy, but indicates considerably more respect for the importance of free (and diverse) speech, and freedom generally.

[The Krauthammer column was in any case in weirdly poor taste. Krauthammer boasts of his psychiatric training, and then suggests Dean is nuts. It starts with the headline (“The Delusional Dean”), goes on to say that for Dean “it's time to check on thorazine supplies”. Oh yeah: it's just vaguely possible that Krauthammer was joking, as he suggests that another cure for Dean's disease is to donate to the Republican Party. So who knows, maybe making jokes about mental illness is what passes for yuks in the Krauthammer circles.]

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In one corner, William Safire, being tactical. In the other corner Joshua Marshall being reasonable. (And, in the background, the Defence Dept. disowning the report Safire is relying on.) You gotta wonder about prundits when they rely on stuff that's already been disowned and refuted. Or just turn to your Daily Howler for a very jaundiced view of the pundit class.

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William Safire bought me lunch once.

There. That's a William Safire leed. Has nothing to do with what I'm really going to write about, but it situates me as being a Player. 'Course, when Safire has the personal item it's a signal he's going to be nice to the guy (it's almost always a guy) who was nice to him.

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You do read some humbling things online. Here's one: t a c i t u s: Failure of nerve.

Impressive as this is essay is, I wonder if the non sequitor with which it concludes is correct: Is it wrong to think that, on average, politicians who have served in the military may be more sensible in their use of force than those for whom combat is an abstraction? And even if that is wrong, does it follow that it's wrong to suspect draft-evaders, again on average, of middle-aged over-compensation?

History is an uncertain guide. For example, both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon served in the Navy, and both escalated in Vietnam. Clinton had a draft deferment and built a great big military. Current events, however, strongly suggest a conclusion.