The case for ending civil-service protection of federal employees

...is made by stories like this.

Some people don’t just need to be fired. They need to be fired, and then horsewhipped on their way out.

Via Tam.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:23:45 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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No, I didn't watch it

And managed to avoid finding out who won^[1] until 10:36 this morning, when I read this post^[2] at Althouse.

Which, at least according to some people^[3], means i’m doomed:

...a guy who can’t, or won’t, participate in that kind of sports banter among men--- is going to find himself, throughout life, on the periphery.

Isolated, decreased job prospects, diminished dating opportunities, rejected by the in-crowd, and near the bottom of the social circuit.

Sigh...

(Hint:  If you own the business, everybody chats about what you want to chat about.)

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^[1] Not that I made a special effort to avoid the football, but this year I had no interest in the contenders.  So last night I cooked dinner/washed up, watched Great Performances: Chuck Jones (and a couple of other features) from my recently-acquired Looney Tunes Vol.5 collection, then went to bed without watching the local news. This morning I woke up late, so only caught the 10 a.m. radio news, by which time they were through with the Superbowl and were spending all their time talking about Super Tuesday.

^[2] and ^[3] see below the break...
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:18:05 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Good question

“Why do bloggers succeed on policy -- say, with porkbusting, immigration, and other issues -- and not with candidacies?”

The key question in this post by Ed Morissey.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 23:31:46 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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What might have been

How things should have played out:

All of the victims -- ranging in age from 22 to 37 -- were herded toward a back room of the store, he said. At that point LaShanda Quantrell took her licensed .38 caliber pistol from her purse and shot the gunman five times, killing him instantly.

Quantrell, 26, told reporters “Everybody knows that the place they are taking you to is the murder scene. I waited until his back was turned and no one else as in danger. No way was I going to just let him kill us. United 93, motherf*cker.”

Unfortunately...

Via Tam.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:17:23 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Parallel universe?

Peggy Noonan:

Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack Obama.

And Mr. Spock has a beard.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:54:15 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Blair's back

And they say he's cured...

No, no, they mean “of cancer.”


As expected, a few folks are extending congratulations. (What is it with some people?)

LATER: Better behaviour here, here, here, here, and (mostly) here. (Via.)  And the above tweaked to reflect it.

Previously: You know, this January is turning out to really suck.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 19:38:03 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Programmer stories: Error messages

From a comment thread at The Register. Cut-n-pasted below because no permalinks.
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:19:10 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Five years ago...

National Weather Service radar detects the debris field from the disintigration of the space shuttle Columbia.

Thanks to Glenn for reminding me.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 01:59:26 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Oh yes, and overheated rhetoric, too

See-Dubya.comments at Ace:

You know, Ace, if you or one of the guest-morons used the phrase “like rats in a Skinnerian dystopia” seriously, and not as a dig at pretentious eggheads like this tool here, your own commenters would club you with it and flay you alive like a baby seal.

It would be thrown in your face in every flamewar. It would become the new “Spring Awakening,” but without the mitigation of Lauraw’s admission that “hey, this is something I wrote when I was drunk.”

The MSM scribbler worries about the “dark tides of popular cynicism.” The blogger cries, “Surf’s up!”

I believe we have another rotating-title candidate.

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 18:28:15 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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"Public bias[ed] against the press"?

Poynter Institute scholar Roy Peter Clark reads the Sacred Heart study and then turns the situation on its head:

I hold journalists less responsible -- and the public more responsible -- for misperceptions of news media performance. In short, the last two decades have seen unprecedented attacks upon the legitimacy of the news media, so many messages from so many directions that they are as impossible to ignore as, say, the soft-core sexual images that pervade American culture.

(Cute analogy. Those awful critics... why, they're just like pornographers!)

Clark blames everyone- the “culture of entertainment and celebrity,” politicians (especially the Bush administration), the public (for “lump[ing] the news media (journalism!) with other forms of entertainment and professional gossip,” talk radio (with its agenda to “destroy the credibility of the mainstream press”), “partisan bloggers,” members of the “alienated technocracy” who dismiss “‘dead tree’ journalism,” television’s depiction of reporters as “slimeballs or part of the wolf pack^[1],” even David Letterman, Jay Leno, and “The Daily Show”- everyone, that is, except the reporters, editors, and publishers who sold us on the idea of journalistic objectivity, and then failed to deliver.

And who polluted the news with “entertainment and celebrity”? Seems to me it was a newspaperman^[2] who said, “what’s in the public interest isn’t necessarily what the public is interested in,” meaning the press had a duty to be sure that the dull, boring stuff got covered, even if nobody read it. Claiming to be giving the public what it wants is no defence. (After all, pornographers give the public what it wants, too.)

Even with shrinking resources, journalists have never been more responsible or better trained.

I would disagree on both points. First, too many journalists want to be pundits. They got into the business “to make a difference,” not to “report the news.” The new-journalism concept of “compelling narratives” too often results in advocacy, instead of reporting. And I’m not sure that the degree-requiring professionalization of the press has produced “better trained” reporters. “Better trained” at the mechanics of their trade, perhaps, but often astonishingly ignorant of history and the greater world.

Finally, Clark laments:

But nothing journalists do will reverse the dark tides of popular cynicism. The wrecking balls destroying the credibility of the press cannot be stopped until we focus more attention on the credibility of those who are pulling the levers, including a public that has been conditioned, like rats in a Skinnerian dystopia, to hate us.

So citizens are too dumb, too propagandized, and too conditioned to be able to rationally judge the press’ output. It’s not the press, it’s those evil lever-pullers!  We’re victims!

What arrogance! What chutzpah! What a shame.


Afterword: Poynter has a comments thread for Clark’s article. Unfortunately, you must register, even if you only want to read the existing comments. Talk about staying inside the walled garden. I wonder what Jeff Jarvis would think.

Via: McClatchy Watch
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^[1] Clark recalls

...the days when the alter-ego of Superman was crusading reporter Clark Kent, or when the heroes of Frank Capra movies were dashing reporters, the booze-swilling champions of the little guy.

He needs to watch some more movies: Like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (in which the evil publishers line up their newspapers and radio networks against a courageous senator), or The Return of the Thin Man (the sharpest reporter in the pressroom phones in his “on the spot” reports without getting off the couch).

^[2] Google failed me here. Any readers recognize the quote?

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 17:50:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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