Archive for the 'In the News' Category

“What do we do now?”

Published
by
Aaron
on November 5, 2008
in Election and In the News
. 0 Comments

In the famed 1972 political film, The Candidate, Robert Redford plays a naive California lawyer who, at the suggestion and advice of an election specialist, becomes the Democratic frontrunner for Senator in California. While the whole movie is very good, it all comes together at the very end, when a surprised and distraught Redford who, after winning the Senate seat, asks his campaign manager in the midst of screaming journalists, “what do we do now?” The campaign manager does not hear him, and Redford is left speechless and puzzled while heckling reporters surround him. The New York Times’s A.O. Scott has a very good comparison of this movie and modern American politics, but for me the last line sums up what everyone’s thinking — what do we do now? For each party that participated in this campaign, there is a different answer for that one, oh-so-important question:

Barack Obama: For the President-elect, these next few days and weeks will play out like a Jewish wedding: Election Day was like the actually ceremony, and Election night was the consummation. Right now is his sheva brachos, or seven blessings, the period of seven days after a wedding filled with lots of partying and more food than you can possibly imagine. But, after the sheva brachos, the not-so-glamorous parts of marriage begin to seep in. You need a better job, a better house; do you want kids, do you not want kids; does your spouse need to lose weight or do you; and, of course, there’s that issue of finding some “me” time. Similarly, Obama will need to start getting his act together after the partying is all done. He’s already started by inviting Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel (brother of superagent Ari Emanuel, the inspiration for Entourage’s Ari Gold) to be his Chief of Staff, but other issues such as picking a Cabinet still loom. Also, Obama will need to figure out how to implant a lot of the “change” policies he’s been touting for the past two years. With the Democrats possibly getting sixty Senate seats this election and at least 254 in the House, this probably won’t be a huge issue, but still one that needs addressing. And of course, the President-elect will need to tend to the two most pressing issues for the U.S. currently: the economy and Iraq. Healthcare and more general foreign policy (three cheers for America being popular in the world again!) are also highly important. But, at least for now, enjoy your parties, Barack, because these next few weeks will require your utmost focus and attention.

Congress: As I mentioned before, not only did the Dems win the presidency in a landslide, they also increased their majorities in both houses of Congress. What does this mean? Well, in addition to being able to speedily pass Obama’s proposed legislation (which ranges from taxes to Iraq to healthcare), the new Congress may be able to firmly tackle some important issues like gay marriage and economic stimulus policies. But before they get too ahead of themselves, Congress will need to remember that the last time the Democrats won Congress and the presidency, in 1992, it was promptly taken away from them in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” Republicans took control of both houses, which they held until 2006. While the factors then and now are very different, the Democratic Congress will need to remember to avoid being too partisan and hostile to the GOP, as political unity after a close election is key to preserving political stability.

The Media: “The election is over…so how the hell do we make money?” Good question. Well, for one thing, now that Obama’s President-elect, he’ll be ripe for media (and talk show) scrutiny about past voting history, policies, and his personal life (but not any of that Bill Ayers bullshit). Still, NBC can kiss goodbye their Tina Fey/Sarah Palin election viewers, which is a shame, but not an excuse for SNL to go back to sucking royally. My advice to the media: keep digging for the truth, in the election and Obama’s past, even if it no longer matters in terms of voting, because as American citizens we have the right to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth about our leaders, even if they’re great ones (just ask Bill Clinton…). Oh, and talk/comedy shows, don’t stop being funny. Please. Just because you lose Dubya and Caribou Barbey doesn’t give you an excuse to stop coming up with good material. Remember, Biden’s a friggin’ gaffe machine and Obama’s, well, got those big ears.

We, the People of the United States of America: Before I say anything, I would like to show you this xkcd comic, which sums up what I was going to say pretty well:

91107F1D-26A9-4056-8E9D-99CD5C3548EC.jpg

Yeah, basically what this (and I also) is saying is “what the hell are we going to do without a constant stream of election news?” Well, Slate has an article listing things to do online to ward off post-election boredom, which includes such classics like watching online videos and playing addicting flash games. Also, sites like HuffPo and The Daily Beast aren’t just going to shut down; they’ll still be producing lots of cool, non-election content. And hello, just because this election is over doesn’t mean that politics stops existing. There’s still important issues out there, like gay marriage and abortion rights, that need to be tackled. Plus, the economy is still in the toilet, we’re still in Iraq, and Putin will need to be watched by more than just Little Miss Sarah’s Alaskan brigade. And hey, football season is underway, and the Giants are beasting, so if you need to follow, root for, and track something relentlessly, that’s it. The point is, there’s still loads to do, even if compulsively watching FiveThirtyEight.com isn’t one of them. As a people and a nation, we’ve accomplished so much these past two years it makes no sense just to take all of that grassroots organization and throw it down the toilet.

So, to answer Senator McKay’s question, there is a lot to do now, whether you’re President Obama or, yes, Joe the Plumber. So, instead of standing there with a confused look in your face, get out there and do something for this big, crazy world we live in!

When the Right is too Right for the Right…Did That Make Sense?

Published
by
Aaron
on October 20, 2008
in In the News and Politics
. 0 Comments

It’s amazing how coming of age in this political climate can change you. As someone whose earliest political memories are Monica Lewinsky and Florida 2000, it can be amazing for me to see that the way politics works now, with the inctedible polarity of the Democrat and Republican parties, was not always the case. In 1936, F.D.R. won the electoral college, 523-8. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won every single state except Minnesota. These two men could not be more different, whether it be in demeanors, personal history, or politics, yet they both won in landslide elections, capturing many of the same voting demographics (want to learn more about thee FDR-Regan phenomenon? Buy my dad’s book, The Inheritance: How Three Families and the American Political Majority Moved from Left to Right, now available from Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com). But somewhere, somehow, something changed. Instead of trying to research and explain it myself, I’ll let New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks do the talking:

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Basically, what Mr. Brooks just said is that the Democrats gained a strong base of Ivy League, coastal types, prompting the Republicans to do the opposite and distance themselves for the coastal intellectuals by becoming the party of the midwest and deep south (though the latter may have more to do more with LBJ). So, what was the result of this political evolution of the GOP? Brooks, again:

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4-to-1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. It took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.

…

And so, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission — because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission — by telling members of that class to go away.

The signs of this radicalization of the Republican party have never shown more clearly than in this election. Recently, two moderate Republicans of very different positions announced their support for Senator Barack Obama: Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell. Buckley, the son of conservative author and pundit William F. Buckley and Washington satire author of Thank You For Smoking, announced his support for Obama, which subsequently resulted in him resigning for his father’s magazine, the National Review, on Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast, saying:

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

When Powell announced his support for Obama on Meet the Press yesterday (video link here), he similarly remarked that, “As gifted as [John McCain] is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it. But I think we need a generational change.”

Buckley, and more importantly Powell, moving their support over to Obama is the climax of an American political paradigm shift that has been in the works since Reagan. The truth is, intellectual, moderate Republicans, once a staple of the party, have been increasingly sensing that they are living in an environment hostile to their beliefs, and need to jump ship before they are forced out by their former colleagues. It’s no coincidence that both Buckley and Powell described Obama as being new and different from other Democrats — he is also part of the paradigm shift of how the sacrifice of the South made by the Democratic Party in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will finally be returned to them in the form of a new leader, one who will break through the tight grip of the Republicans and reclaim voters who never should have left the Democrats in the first place. Yes, I know this sounds little messiah-esque, but the point still stands that Obama will be the man who brings together the left and right, north and south, Joe Sixpack and coastal conehead. So what can the Republicans do about this? Well, it’s too late. What started with Reagan will soon end with Obama, and it’ll take another thirty years for the Republicans to ever get their intellectual, moderate base back and become popular again.

Joe the Plumber ain’t no plumber!

Published
by
Aaron
on October 16, 2008
in Election, In the News and Politics
. 0 Comments

Really, Joe, really..if that’s even you’re real name. Actually, it isn’t. Turns out Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher is actually Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, and he’s not even a licensed plumber! The Times has more details, plus a video (which I’ve also attached below). As it turns out, Joe the Plumber actually sounds kind of like an asshole.

Thoughts on Last Night’s Debate

Published
by
Aaron
on October 16, 2008
in Election, In the News, NYC and Politics
. 3 Comments

Well, as you politically aware readers know, last night was the last debate of the 2008 Presidential campaign, between John “Maverick/Oldie/Satan” McCain and Barack “Terrorist/Hussein/Savior” Obama. Now, the day after, the question to be asked is, who won? Let’s see what the Interwebs had to say:

The Huffington Post

John McCain didn’t just fail to get the game-changer he needed — he was trounced in this third and final debate, if the instant post-debate polling provides any indication.

The New York Times

Senator John McCain used the final debate of the presidential election on Wednesday night to raise persistent and pointed questions about Senator Barack Obama’s character, judgment and policy prescriptions in a session that was by far the most spirited and combative of their encounters this fall.

CNN

John McCain came out of the gate strong, but Barack Obama gained strength as the night progressed Wednesday in the final presidential debate where each candidate tried to convince voters that he is better equipped to steer the nation through these troubled times.

From this little metablogging sampler of post-debate analysis, it seems that a) McCain’s glove pulling made the debate more interesting, and b) Obama still schooled his old man ass. In my personal opinion (based on the first hour I watched for before heading off to bed), McCain definitely gave his best performance yet, with zinger lines like “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” Still, Obama was cool and collected, if a little dry, considering that he has significant leads in the swing-state polls. There was also another interesting aspect of last night’s debate: Joe the Plumber. Who is Joe the Plumber? Well, he’s a combination of two things: a Joe Six-pack-like metaphor for the Everyman (and the hockey mom’s working-class spouse), and he’s also an Ohio plumber named Joe Wurzelbacher (seen with Senator Obama at right). Mr. Wurzelbacher’s now famed epithet was mentioned over two dozen times last night, mainly in reference to the differences between the two candidates’ tax policies, prompting some lively Internet discussion.

But the question still remains — did this debate help determine who the next President will be? Maybe not, but I’m sure that it helped the business of one Ohio plumber.

Palestinian-Israeli-American peace talks redux

Published
by
Aaron
on November 27, 2007
in In the News, Israel and Politics
. 0 Comments

As many of you already know, today was the Middle East Peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, hosted by President Bush. While many other Middle Eastern dignitaries showed up, the main attractions were Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who were there to, at least in theory, try to discuss peace between their waring peoples. If anything, the greatest accomplishment for Bush from the event was the following photograph (which is most graciously stolen from The New York Times).
27Prexy2-600
Nice, isn’t it? But doesn’t it remind you of another, similar photograph from, say, 1993?
Rabin, Clinton, Arafat
Yeah, that picture depicts then-Isralei Prime minister Yitzchak Rabin, PLO leader Yassir Arafat, and President Clinton at the signing of the Oslo Accords. Now, let’s see what they’re up to now:
Rabin, Clinton, Arafat-1
Yeah, not so good. And as for the Oslo Accords, they kind of, well, failed. The Israeli and Palestinian death toll from suicide bombings and attacks over the past fourteen years should tell you that. But that was then, what about now? Here’s how our current peace-makers are doing in the polls:
27Prexy2-600-1
OK fine, “Hamas wants to kill me” isn’t a percentage, but I couldn’t find any Abbas poll statistics in a quick Google search. And as for Olmert’s numbers, they’re the same as the margin of error, or lower! Theoretically, less than zero people in Israel support Olmert! That’s not even possible!!! But the point is that all of these guys need something good on their record if they want to go down in history as anything better than “total screw-up.”

Sure, maybe I’m taking a cynical view on the conference, which I am. But truthfully, Israel-Palestine talks haven’t worked well in the past. Rabin was assasinated for even participating in them! But I still believe that peace is possible, just not in Annapolis with a President who needs something to distract the public from Iraq. But on the plus side, Abbas and Olmert have both vowed to come up with a peace treaty by the end of the year. For their sake, and ours too, hopefully they will.

“A date which will live in infamy”

Published
by
Aaron
on September 11, 2007
in In the News and NYC
. 0 Comments

911 World Trade CenterOn the morning of December 7th, 1941, an air strike from the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. military base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A day later, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan, thus entering the U.S. into World War II. In the almost 66 years that have gone by since this event, many, especially of my generation, have lost the emotion attached to it. But this has been replaced by an even greater modern catastrophe — the September 11th attacks.
Now, the reason I evoke the attack on Pearl Harbor on this sixth anniversary on 9/11 is because of how much Pearl Harbor changed the world today. Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II on the side of Allies, which if we had not done, the Axis would have probably won the war, thus changing the course of world history forever. But could 9/11 have had this same effect?

Right now it’s too soon to tell. But just six years later, so much has already changed. When millions of ordinary Americans went to bed on September 11th, 2001, not one of them could possibly have imagined how different life would be like today. The 90’s in the United States, and much of the world, was a heyday. Not since the 1920’s had the U.S. had both economic prosperity and diplomatic peace on such a scale (and not to mention being loved by, or at least popular with, much of the world). Alas, it was not to be for long. First, with the dotcom bust of 2000, and then with 9/11 a whole generation of baby boomers entered a new era defined by an unpopular war, an unpopular president, and the always looming threat of terror in an unbalanced and disrupted world. And adults aren’t the only ones affected. My generation, also known as Generation Z (or what I like to call “the iGeneration” — those born in the early and mid-1990’s) is following a similar pattern to those born in the early-to-mid-1920’s — prosperity during the single-digit years, a catastrophe, and the difficult aftermath during the teenage and young adult years.

Still, as I said before, we’re only just beginning to get some perspective on the events of 9/11. We still don’t know how the war in Iraq and the overall war on terror will proceed. We still don’t know how much of the current geo-political make-up was caused by 9/11. But, what is for sure,is that life will never exactly be the same after the “date which will live in infamy.”

* * *

While the main part of my post is now finished, I just wanted to make one final note. Today is not just to commemorate those who died (for a complete list, see here), but also for those who have survived. Here in New York City is probably the place where people are the most affected by the tragic events of 9/11, especially since many people know first-hand someone who died because of the attacks. Yet many people who were at the World Trade Center that day and in the days after got sick from rescue work, yet still don’t recieve government-susidized heathcare. To help, try writing to your local copngressman about the problem (sorry I don’t have a link for a website on the matter).

But even though this September 11th (a Tuesday, just like in 2001) was a dark and gloomy day here in New York, the sun setting leaves a nice, cool blue of solemmn, calm rememberence on the whole city skyline.

Props to the Pops: “On Education” column on digg!

Published
by
Aaron
on August 3, 2007
in In the News, Props to the Pops and digg
. 0 Comments

Somehow, my dad, who is, in every possible way, “technologically inept,” managed to get on the front page of super-modern-Web-2.0 social news site digg (His story, from his most recent education column about a teacher who was forced to pass a failing student, has 2041 diggs and counting). Yet somehow, me, with all of the tech blogging and podcasting I do, never once got any of my work on digg. So why is is that my father did. Could it be his 30+ years of journalistic experience, the recognition of his publisher, or just the fact that he’s an amazing writer? Nah, I don’t think so.

But seriously, the column was very well written, in addition to the fact that I actually read it (I admittedly do not read most of my father’s many columns). So, you guys should definitely check out the column, and digg it up! Now, if only it could get on Diggnation…

Yeetgadal v’ yeetkadash sh’mey rabbah… Part II

Published
by
Aaron
on August 1, 2007
in In the News and Opinion
. 1 Comment

200px-triumph_poster.jpgYou may remember my last post with this title, taken from Kaddish,the Jewish prayer for the dead. It was for when The New York Giants lost their first playoffs game of the season, hence cutting them short of another chance at the Super Bowl.

Well today marks another, even more sad occasion — Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has bought Dow Jones, including The Wall Street Journal. Yes, at some point early this morning or last night, following months of deals, talks and deliberation, News Corp. and Dow Jones signed the deal for the sale of one of the oldest and most prestigious news organizations in the world. Now, as I already went over what this deal means for the future of Dow Jones and the newspaper industry in general in an older post which came out when Murdoch first proposed the sale, I will simply restate my central point:

News Corp. offers the [newspaper] industry exactly what it wants — money, popularity, and regained dominance. Of course, News Corp. would do to the entire newspaper industry what it did to The Times of London, The News York Post, and countless others — turn it into a platform for Murdoch’s (and, as it’s assumed, his successor’s) conservative political ideas and resorting the journalistic quality to that of the cheapest tabloids.

In a nutshell, this means that Murdoch knows how to make a 19th century business profitable in the 21th century, albeit at the price of all and any journalistic integrity. Even more simply, he can “save the newspaper industry by taking its soul.” Yeah, you get the point.

So, the paperwork has been signed. The Bancroft family, after much fighting, debating, and dealing, finally agreed to the deal, ending their 100 years of ownership of Dow Jones. Of course, as many journalist, analysts, and others, including, deep down, myself, believed, the sale of Dow Jones to News Corp. was a done deal the day CNBC broke the story.

So, while News Corp. will engulf Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, breaking down its esteemed journalism into little, bite-sized articles of trash, the story of Dow Jones’s final days will not entirely be a sad one. The Bancroft family, despite eventually giving in to Murdoch’s requests, fought very nobly for the integrity of their publication, and I still hold a great deal of respect for those who kept on fighting until the end, including Christopher Bancroft and Jane Cox MacElree. Speaking of fighting until the end, Leslie Hill has now become, in my mind, one of the most noble business people I know. Not only does Ms. Hill refuse to be in the same room as Murdoch, she also resigned from the Dow Jones board right after the sale was finalized. You go girl!

But, no matter how well they fought, Dow Jones has in fact loss. So now, let us say a virtual prayer for what such a great, bold, and strong news company: Yeetgadal v’ yeetkadash sh’mey rabbah…

My iDay coverage

Published
by
Aaron
on July 1, 2007
in Apple, In the News, Internet and Personal
. 0 Comments

After a nice weekend at the beach to clear my mind of all things Mac, I’m back now and face a tsunami of iPhone news stories and blog posts — joy. But on the plus side, some of those are mine. As I posted before, I was at the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York on Friday to cover the iPhone launch for The Teen Tech Buzz podcast and Macworld. While The Teen Tech Buzz coverage hasn’t been posted yet, the Macworld stuff has, in three forms. The first is a written report of coverage from around the country of the iPhone launch. I have a few paragraphs in the New York section, with a byline, of course, and a photo right next to it. That photo, plus another that I did and several from other Macworld correspondents, is posted on a gallery on Macworld’s iPhone Central blog. Finally, some of my audio coverage is on episode #87 of the Macworld Podcast.

So, while not all of my coverage is online, all of it will be soon, in the form of Flickr photos, a special part of The Teen Tech Buzz podcast, and a set of MacUser/iPhone Central posts. So, to all you security guards, line-waiters, and Apple Store employees who doubted my press credentials — look who’s laughing now.

Sopranos Finale Theories Roundout

Published
by
Aaron
on June 14, 2007
in In the News and Television
. 2 Comments

SPOILER ALERT: DETAILS OF THE SOPRANOS FINALE FOLLOW

With the controversy and puzzlement surrounding the final episode of HBO’s The Sopranos, many people have come up with various theories on the matter. Here’s a short showcase of some:

Comment #55 on a Gothamist post says:

Tony dies. Its all about looking at the earlier episodes in the series. The guy at the bar is Nick Leotardo, Phils brother or cousin. He was in one of the earlier episodes. The black guys who walk in are the guys who tried to kill tony but shot him in the ear in an earlier episode. Then if you notice tony walks into the diner and looks at the booth then the view changes to his perspective. As everyone walks in theres chimes. Carmella walks in and theres chimes, A.J. walks in and chimes, medow walks in and no chimes and it goes black. But rememer when tony and bobby are talking about what it feels like when someone gets “wacked” They say its like you dont even feel it everything probably just goes black. And thats what happened everything went black. So tony dies.

Alia Malek, one of my dad’s former students, said this:

in medieval times, staging of plays ended with different curtains. a white curtain meant death ie protagonist had died. i imagine hamlet would end with a white curtain for examle. a star-y curtain means better things, ie romance etc.

when the black curtain was dropped or “cut to black” (which is where expression comes from) audience is being signalled to “use your imagination” — and if you noticed, sopranos did not fade to black, but cut to black.

it’s so brilliant i’m getting goosebumps thinking about it… i love that ending, though i really hope the whole family is not about to get killed at the diner.

But, my personal favorite is Stephen Colbert’s ideal ending:

That Sopranos finale was such a rip-off. Here’s how it should have ended. Big mob shootout, Tony gets it in the Adam’s apple, he’s losing consciousness, then the screen does that dissolve-y, wipe-y thing, and boom, he’s in bed, waking up from a nightmare. “Wow honey, I just dreamed I spent the last eight years as a mobster in northern New Jersey.” And here’s the kicker — his wife, Carrie Bradshaw. The whole series was a Sex and the City spin-off.

I think that the second theory is most accurate, with that whole Nick Leotardo thing being just an urban legend. Personally, I follow the ideas presented in an article I still have not yet been able to find again, which said that with the camera acting like Tony’s eyes, normal people in a normal restaurant seem like hitmen, showing that Tony will spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

Don’t like any of these theories? Well, go watch the finale and come up with your own. Or, just see the crucial restaurant scene below: