Variation on a meme redux

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected police would arrest reporters for taking pictures of political fat cats on public sidewalks.

Via:  “sonofdy,” in a comment at Michelle Malkin

Moments later:  Insty beat me (not surprisingly!):

You can't make this stuff up.

UPDATE 080827 23:03:  Eating their own?  (via mesablue at Ace)

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Arabian-Knight-Ridder?

Alan Mutter:

With a growing number of newspapers on the market at a time they most likely will fetch historically low prices, somebody is going to start buying some of them. But don’t count on the usual suspects.

Start thinking, instead, about such unconventional potential purchasers as the multibillion-dollar investment funds created by countries like Singapore or the sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates.

For considerably less than $1 billion of the up to $800 billion in its coffers, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council could buy the Newark Star-Ledger, Chicago Sun-Times and San Diego Union and turn them into U.S. editions of The National, the new English-language paper launched in the spring by the state-owned Abu Dhabi Media Co.

America’s newspapers, owned and controlled by the Arabs.  Lovely.

’Course they probably wouldn’t be any less believable than they are now...

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 02:59:05 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Off the air

After almost four years, “Callimachus” at Done With Mirrors feels the chill:

In the current workplace climate and the likely evolution of the political scene both inside and outside the newsroom, it would be extremely unwise for me to continue blogging, even anonymously...

[continuing, in the comments:] This newsroom, like most, is in a lifeboat ethics mode^[1]. They’re looking for reasons to thin the herd...  ...The last time my online writing drew unwanted attention from my bosses, and a direct promise to terminate me if it continued, was in the run up to the last presidential election, when what I was writing was not the sort of things they liked to see written.

Regrettable, but perhaps inevitable, given the sort of “management” that infests most papers today.  (I can certainly understand his lack of enthusiasm for being a martyr for free speech, especially when there are bills to pay, but my unasked-for advice would be, “Polish your resume. And Get. Out. Now.”^[2]  There’s little to gain (except, possibly, personal satisfaction) from being the Last Man Standing; your bosses certainly won’t reward you.)

Meanwhile, this reader will miss his thoughtful, literate, wide-ranging posts.  For those unacquainted with his blog, here are few recent recommended readings:


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Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 16:28:13 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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