Clipfile: September 14, 2007

"...The costumes... looked like they'd been designed for the Siberia Light Opera Company's production of  'The Merry Widow.'" -- Terry Teachout reviews the Royal Shakespeare Company's "King Lear" (in today's Wall Street Journal)

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Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 18:24:19 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Anyone surprised at this? Anyone???

Headline of the center-column story on page 1 of today's Wall Street Journal:

From the article:

"It's like [passengers] are entitled to be ignorant, rude, and arrogant because they purchased a ticket..."

After all the stories of ignorant, rude, and arrogant treatment OF passengers by the Airlines and the TSA clowns, well, I think it's called "reaping what you sow."

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:53:34 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Keeping the news from the kids

While reading yesterday's 9/11 reminiscences, I ran across two stories that bothered me. [Bolding is mine in both] First:

I was teaching at what was then Moorhead Junior High. It was a time where we had never had a lockdown drill and never had to have a crisis response team other than our school counselors. As the events of the day unfolded in the lounge on one of the few televisions in the building, we were faced with the grim reality of deciding how to handle the news with our students. Our principal made the wise decision to ask all teachers to shut off the televisions and follow business as usual. The tremendous magnitude of what was unfolding was completely out of our realm, much less the realm of twelve and thirteen year-olds... -- "lvundbison," commenting at buzz.mn

and

My two girls, ages 8 & 9, are at school... 4 blocks away from where I am. I have to go hug them and take them home. The school tells me it's better to not disrupt 'normal' for the kids & that they'll be told by their teachers what they need to know in a calm manner. -- "MEinV," commenting at buzz.mn

Now I'm sure those educators, in the face of an unprecedented situation, did what they thought best by isolating their students from the reality of what was happening. But let me tell my own story, about a Friday afternoon in November of 1963.
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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:22:56 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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9/11 + Six Years + One Day: Myths and Hopes

Well, I spent a good deal of Tuesday reading various 9/11 posts, all the while trying to organize my thoughts for a post of my own. Things never did gel, so a day late, instead of a "here's how I feel this year" post, a look at some myths that have grown up around 9/11, some hopes that never materialized, and some lessons learned.  
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Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 21:16:42 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Kicking off year 6...

"Diamond Geezer" (found on the blogroll as "Best London Trivia") has begun his 6th year of blogging with a visit to the "random borough" of Haringey.

• Somewhere Retail, Somewhere Sporty, Somewhere Historic
• Somewhere Pretty: Parkland Walk
• Somewhere Random, Somewhere Pretty (2), Somewhere Famous
  

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:17:03 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Clipfile: September 9, 2007

A well-turned phrase from an anonymous poster:

"["Scholars" who misuse terms of art] ...are the hermit crabs of the intellect, taking up residence in structures they didn't build, wrapping themselves in words they don't understand."

Posted by: Old Grouch in Clipfile at 14:41:51 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Naming names: Blogs do another job the mainstream press won't do

On Monday, Glenn Reynolds linked this story (from which I'll be quoting below), with the comment:

The traditional English response to things like this involved tar and feathers. The British may want to bring those traditions back.

His "tar and feathers" remark triggered some reader mail, and Reynolds responded:

Traditionally, Anglo-American political philosophy allowed for what Gordon Wood called "out of doors political activity" -- behavior that was extralegal, but not exactly unlawful, in response to overreaching by authorities...
In my conversation with colleagues, we speculated that the Internet takes on part of this role, with humorous photoshops and YouTube parodies -- along with the ability to simply repeatedly criticize government officials by name (think Mike Nifong) undercutting the usual bureaucratic diffusion of responsibility -- taking the place of some of the older techniques. [Bolding mine - O.G.]

"Naming and shaming" of officials may turn out to be one of  the bloggers' most important functions, given the way the regular media (even talk radio) customarily omit identifying the people behind the positions. Example? Well, here's an extract of the Telegraph article, with my comments:

Social services' [No such agency. Probably the "Northumberland Safeguarding Children Board," but the story doesn't make that clear.] recommendation [Who made it?] that the baby should be taken from Fran Lyon... was based in part on a letter from a[n unnamed] paediatrician she has never met...
Hexham children's services [unnamed bureaucrats], part of Northumberland County Council [Whose members are?], said [Agencies don't "say."  Who?] the decision had been made [Who made it?  (And why the passive voice?)]  because Miss Lyon was likely to suffer from Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy, a condition  unproven by science in which a mother will make up an illness in her child, or harm it, to draw attention to herself. Social services' request [Who signed it?] for an emergency protection order - these are usually granted - will be heard in secret in the family court at Hexham magistrates [and who are they?] on the same day.

In fact, in its 825-word story, the Telegraph fails to identify any of the bureaucrats, officials, or council members involved: Only the victim and her supporters are named, while the government is allowed to hide behind an unnamed "spokesman."

Why are those people nameless? One dirty little secret of newsgathering is that reporters must deal repeatedly with their sources. A reporter who
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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 05:11:35 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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"I could not stop the tears."

"Tree Hugging Sister" reports from New Orleans:

The second and third floors of the buildings are empty. And it's not just that block. They're almost all empty. It's like a creepy fantasy village, where most of the street level shops on the main thoroughfares are open (it's a different story on sidestreets ~ two or three shuttered shops in a row at a time), but the floors above are a facade. People work there...but no one lives there...
...we've dropped down on the Irish Bayou side of the Pontchartrain I-10 bridge and SEEN NOTHING the whole way into the city. Miles upon miles of bleak abandoned apartments and condos and housing tracts by the thousands... It's all still standing ~ all the businesses, buildings, neighborhoods ~ all still standing. But now a ghost town of unimaginable scale.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 01:10:34 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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