Author: jbenton

It’s 11 a.m. and I’ve already blogged 800 words — can you tell that my Sunday stories are now finished?
Anyway, I leave this afternoon for Louisiana, where my grandmother’s house and my childhood bed await. I get to spend the weekend trying to revitalize my decrepit, six-year-old Power Mac 7200 (90mhz! 500MB hard drive! 16MB RAM!) for my grandmother’s email use. Basically, it’ll be a test to see how large I can make icons without giggling. I’ll blog from there (assuming I can get the 7200 to work), but in any event, I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and a happy holiday. Doing this site has been great fun, and it’s all (sniff) because of (sniff) you guys. (must…not…cry…)
Oh, and Erica, if you didn’t believe me when I told you I was from the Frog Capital of the World, eat your words.

Peter Beinart (formerly of my college paper, now czar of the New Republic) has an interesting column on how journalism has changed since 9/11. His theory: everybody’s gotten more serious and substantial, but in different ways. Magazines have become more dry and newsy, and newspapers have become more (in his words) “moist” and emotional.
It’s an interesting point, but I’m not sure how much I buy the details. His main evidence for the newspaper end of his argument is the New York Times, particularly its acclaimed brief obituaries of all the WTC victims, which certainly are more narrative-driven, experimental, and emotional than normal NYT obits (which are, of course, deeply wonderful in their own way). But remember that September was also when the NYT gots a new top editor, Howell Raines, who has a reputation as being more of a fiery, emotional type than his predecessor, Joe Lelyveld, so it might not be a 9/11 thing. And I haven’t seen that same shift to emotion in other, non-NYT papers.
And on the magazine end, he cites the New Yorker’s recent Bernard Lewis essay that served as a very dry, clear-headed, almost pedagogic primer on Islamic history. But that’s more the exception than the rule; the New Yorker’s investigative Sy Hersh stuff has been better and more prominent.
And if you think the media’s too serious now to report of silly fluff, I don’t believe you.
Anyway, probably what annoyed me most about Beinart’s piece is that it claims that 9/11 will be a blow against what he calls anthropological journalism, particularly of the type done by my hero mentioned below, Malcolm Gladwell. “The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell attained journalistic stardom by exposing the intricate mechanisms of everyday life–how fads begin, how information flows, how neighborhoods change…But it quickly became clear that this kind of writing didn’t work as well after September 11.” I doubt it — I’d bet that, if anything, the fact that the world seems a lot more confusing and complex than it did on 9/10 would make that sort of wonderful explanatory journalism more useful, not less.
Actually, I’d bet that, if anything, there’s no impact at all, and that Beinart’s just another member of that most common journalistic tribe, a writer in search of a trend that doesn’t exist.

Hypothetical question: let’s say a major sports figure — one with with debatably anti-Semitic and racist tendencies in his past — steps up to the mike at a banquet and tells the following two jokes. “What’s the difference between a Jew and a canoe? A canoe tips!” And “A black, a Puerto Rican, and a Mexican are in a car. Who’s driving? The police!”
For most people, the uproar would be instant. People get fired for that sort of thing. So why, when Muhammed Ali told those jokes Monday, was there essentially no reaction?
I’m not asking to make some sort of political point; I’m genuinely interested. Earlier this month, Denver Nuggets coach Dan Issel got into a heap of trouble for yelling at a drunken heckler, “Go drink another beer, you Mexican [expletive],” which to my mind is at least debatably not worse than what Ali said. (The guy in question evidently was quite drunk and belligerent, and I’d consider simply using the word “Mexican” to describe someone Hispanic less offensive than perpetuating stereotypes about an ethnic group.)
Ali is, of course, now a culturally beloved figure nowadays, but it wasn’t too long ago he was talking about “white devils” and towing the Nation of Islam/Farrakhan line on the evils of Jews, so one might think the slightest misstep in that direction would be grabbed onto immediately. Is it the Parkinson’s that makes his inviolate to criticism? (If so, can we expect Michael J. Fox to start mouthing off soon?)
I’m interested in how different people get treated differently for saying the same things. If Bill Clinton had said half of the things George W. Bush has said in the last year, he’d have been pilloried by conservatives, because the storyline of Clinton-bashing had already been ingrained into the media and the punditocracy. In Ali’s case, I think it matters that he has no boss: if someone who says something bad can be fired by someone, the urge for columnists et al to make a big fuss about it is greater. Any ideas?

Maybe they finally figured out what “Winkerbean” really means: Funky Winkerbean, world’s most annoying comic strip, deemed too “controversial” for Albuquerque newspaper.

My journalistic hero, Malcolm Gladwell, has an interesting piece in this week’s New Yorker on Stanley Kaplan, the man who beat the SAT.
And from the Self-Promotion Dept.: feel free to pick up Sunday’s paper; there should (hopefully) be two okay stories of mine on the front page.

An extended, clearheaded excerpt from this week’s Plaintext (not on the web site yet), from Mike Antonucci:
So much ink has been spilled about Western efforts to understand why Islamic extremists might feel and act the way they do, but no one yet has suggested ignorance. America is an open society, with a free press, freedom of speech, and more information about everything than one person can reasonably assimilate. Most of the Middle East is a closed society, with controlled press and institutions, and extraordinarily limited information, particularly about America.
Read the words of Mahfouz Walad Al-Walid, an Al Qaeda leader who was interviewed this month by Al Jazeera television. “In our opinion, America has entered the phase of the beginning of the end,” he said. “America is talking about wanting to uproot terrorism in Afghanistan, but the truth is that those in Afghanistan have succeeded in uprooting America from its fortresses and bases and have dragged it, humiliated and shame-faced, to Afghanistan, where their hands, bayonets, and weapons can reach her.”
Another Al Qaeda member, Abu-Al-Hasan Al-Masri, also challenged America on Al Jazeera. “If you are true men, come down here and face us,” he said. The legless sheik on the bin Laden tape said: “Thank Allah America came out of its caves.” He also interprets the news reports from America on September 11 this way: “They were terrified, thinking there was a coup.”
These are guys who are dramatically misinformed about America. And no wonder. Much of their conversation revolves around ex post facto dream interpretation, as if they had just gotten off the phone with Miss Cleo (say, that turban looks familiar…)

Normally, Arizona Cardinals football doesn’t get a rise out of me. (Or anyone, for that matter.) But check out this story on Cardinals receiver David Boston. His dad‘s a referee in the NFL. You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to avoid dad being a ref in son’s games — but evidently the league has no problem with it. “He finally officiated one of my games last year,” David says in the article.
Why in the world is that allowed? There was controversy when the elder Boston ref’d a game that just involved a division rival of the Cardinals; doesn’t the appearance of impropriety kick in somewhere? It’s not as if there aren’t dozens of other games to work every Sunday. (I pledge to keep further sports-related blogging to a minimum for a while, don’t worry.)

News from Northwest Ohio, Land of Enchantment: Surgeon uses scalpel to open eyelids Super Glued shut in fraternity “prank.”
Aaron Laser, a junior majoring in political science at the University of Toledo, said yesterday a doctor removed most of his eyelashes, but no stitches were needed. ‘It looks pretty gross,’ he said.
Mr. Laser was at the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house visiting friends when he fell asleep on a sofa because he was tired from working at a local car wash. While asleep, someone wrote on his face with a marker and glued a receipt from the Student Union bookstore to his head. One of his friends tried to remove the receipt, but couldn

A random recommendation: if you get a chance, take a listen to the last Starlight Mints record, The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of. It’s quite good, and they show up here in Dallas fairly regularly (they’re from Oklahoma).
This random recommendation was brought to you by a chance glance at the web site of their label, Seethru Broadcasting (also home to the marvelous Enon, also a semi-regular Dallas/Denton visitor and whose track Come Into is currently my writing soundtrack). It was there that I noticed that the version of the album that I have is clearly inferior to the alternate cover, which appears to depict a boozy Muppet Joe Cocker.

A new study has tracked what people of different demographics find funny. Their findings (as interpreted by me): people like dumb jokes.
One of the top jokes in Germany: “Why is television called a medium? Because it is neither rare nor well-done.” (Har-dee-har-har.)
Belgians preferred: “Well, you see, there are basically three kinds of people in the world. Those who can count and those that can’t.”
The Swedish fave: “A guy phones the local hospital and yells, `you’ve gotta send help! My wife’s in labour!” The nurse says, `calm down. Is this her first child?’ He replies, `no! This is her husband!”‘ (Okay, that’s one’s not awful.)
Women preferred: “A man walks into a bar with a piece of Tarmac under his arm. He says to the barman: `A pint for me, and one for the road’.” (Sad, really.)
Voted dumbest joke in an accompanying Internet survey: “Why are chickens considered good employees? Because they work around the cluck.”