Nice writing on a smear campaign

Posted in 28 March 2010
1 Comment »

Rachel Maddow in flight on MSNBC

MSNBC took out a full-page ad in Friday’s Boston Globe for a ‘letter’ from their talk show host Rachel Maddow to her fellow Massachusetts citizens. This was a response to Senator Scott Brown’s claims (in an effort to raise money, apparently) that she is planning a run against him in 2012.

Her letter contains some nice touches (“It’s just not true. Honestly. I swear. No, really.”)
Read it for yourself…

Hi, I’m Rachel Maddow. I host a TV show on MSNBC. I also live in Western Massachusetts, in the beautiful hilltowns of Hampshire County.

This week, our new U.S. Senator, Scott Brown, sent a fundraising letter that says I’m running against him for Senate when he’s up for re-election in 2012.

I’m not running against Scott Brown. I never said I was running against Scott Brown. The Massachusetts Democratic Party never asked me to run against Scott Brown. It’s just not true. Honestly. I swear. No, really.

Senator Brown never even tried to find out if it was true, before using the made-up threat of me running against him, to try to scare donors into giving him more money. He sent the letter all around the country, to the out-of-state conservative activists who provided so much of the funding for his successful Senate campaign.

Do you remember when Mitt Romney ran for President after being our Governor and he went around the country insulting Massachusetts, talking about what an awful state we are? To have our new Senator raising money around the country by saying how terrible one of his Massachusetts constituents is, kind of feels the same way to me.

It’s standard now for conservatives to invent scary fake threats to run against — things like the made-up ‘death panels’ in health reform, or the fake controversy about the president’s birth certificate. Senator Scott Brown’s only been in DC seven weeks, but he already seems to be fitting right in with how conservatives operate there.

I’m running this ad not because I’m running against Scott Brown — I’m not, he made that up — but because he’s the Senator for all of us, and maybe this will make him think twice the next time he wants to smear one of his constituents to raise money out-of-state.

My show airs at 9PM Eastern in Massachusetts on MSNBC. So far, Scott Brown refuses to come on. Maybe he’ll change his mind — I hope he does.

Sincerely,

Rachel Maddow

The tone is good, and the dredging up of previous lies (things ‘made-up’) and smear campaigns works. It’s well written and in a likeable ‘voice’. Here’s how it looked… Continue reading →

Politics - Writing/Publishing
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Apple iPad: Here it comes …

Posted in 28 March 2010
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Steve Jobs with his pet project (image: Newsweek)

Fake Steve Jobs Daniel Lyons (writing as, er, Daniel Lyons) in Newsweek puts a compelling case for:

Why The iPad Will Change Everything

Jobs is a relentless perfectionist whose company creates such beautifully designed products that they have changed our expectations about how everything around us should work. He has an uncanny ability to cook up gadgets that we didn’t know we needed, but then suddenly can’t live without. The iPad is his personal pet project. It’s something he’s been working on for years, reportedly even while he was recuperating from a liver transplant. Jobs calls it “a truly magical and revolutionary device,” and supposedly has told people close to him that the iPad is the most important thing he’s ever done.

Which is why so many of us raced to San Francisco in January to get an up-close view of the miraculous tablet. Yet my first thought, as I watched Jobs run through his demo, was that it seemed like no big deal. It’s a bigger version of the iPod Touch, right? Then I got a chance to use an iPad, and it hit me: I want one.

A good comment about Apple’s infamous secrecy rings true …

Let’s be honest: Jobs and his crew make the Church of Scientology look like a bunch of easygoing sweethearts.

Worth reading the whole article at Newsweek.

Does it sound too sycophantic to say I absolutely agree that this device is a game changer? Its simplicity of interface and its connected-ness make it (or something like it) the NEXT STEP. Which was nicely expressed in Mike Monteiro’s prophesy:

The iPad isn’t the future of computing;
it’s a replacement for computing.

Tech
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Men talk shoulder to shoulder

Posted in 27 March 2010
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Men don’t talk face to face.
They talk shoulder to shoulder,
while they’re working on something.

I just heard this insight in a BBC World Service documentary on the Men’s Shed movement in Australia.

So true.

There are exceptions, but this is a good rule of thumb to bear in mind.

(Cheers and kudos to my brotha Mike A and his boatshed, which by pure stint of his personality and willingness to consistently provide a space, creates magic just like this around the potbelly stove … when I can get there. I’m grateful Mike. Cheers.)

—

What is a Men’s Shed?

Most men have learned from our culture that they don’t talk about feelings and emotions. There has been little encouragement for men to take an interest in their own health and well-being. Unlike women, most men are reluctant to talk about their emotions and that means that they usually don’t ask for help.
… Good health is based on many factors including feeling good about yourself, being productive and valuable to your community, connecting to friends and maintaining an active body and an active mind.
Becoming a member of a Men’s Shed gives a man that safe and busy environment where he can find many of these things in an atmosphere of old-fashioned mateship. And, importantly, there is no pressure. Men can just come and have a yarn and a cuppa if that is all they’re looking for.

Encouragement
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How is THIS good for the TRUMP brand?

Posted in 26 March 2010
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Somebody tell me how selling the pie-in-the-sky, one-chance-in-nine-million New Zealand Lotto draw enhances The Donald or his brand … Please.

Donald Trump sells his name and face to sell lottery tickets - photo by Peter Aranyi

Trump thinking big — coming to a mall near you (click to enlarge)

Business/Investment - Media issues

OK, so it’s not just priests who seek to cover sin…

Posted in 26 March 2010
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Alan Greenspan - no mea culpa forthcoming
(AP photo)

The most telling omission in this paper is that the word “fraud” does not appear. But the world knows that the collapse of the financial system had, at its core, the largest financial fraud of all time. That fraud was in the origination, the rating, the underwriting and the issuance of credit default swaps against sub-prime mortgages issued largely by private originators and securitized by the largest banks. …

The Federal Reserve is a regulator. Alan Greenspan was the chief regulator for 18 years. He failed spectacularly. So did his colleagues, at the Office of Thrift Supervision and elsewhere. These facts are not obscured here. They are ignored.

John Kenneth Galbraith ‘reviewing’ Alan Greenspan’s report on the Global Financial Crisis.

This is how straight-talking J.K. Galbraith opens his article: Continue reading →

Big Questions - Business/Investment
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There’s something about a cover-up that offends us …

Posted in 25 March 2010
3 Comments »

God told me to cover sin?

Remember this guy:

I always seek to “cover” another’s sin. I try and focus on the good in others and hide their faults. It is simply trying to obey several specific bible verses. …
Well I had one particular situation where I knew things that were not right and people were potentially being taken advantage of. I have over and over again had to stop myself from saying anything publicly and it has been incredibly hard for me. Every time I said to God that I wanted to see this thing put right HE would say to me “D**** it is your job to cover sin, justice is my problem”.

The head of the Catholic church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady seemed stuck on defending his past inaction and cover up, reportedly justifying the failure of the church to unmask a serial child abuser in the priesthood in these terms:

Earlier Brady said it was the responsibility of his diocesan bishop, as well as the leader of Smyth’s separate Catholic order of priests, to tell police. But he said the church didn’t do this because of “a culture of silence about this, a culture of secrecy.”
“Yes, I knew that these were crimes,” Brady said. “But I did not feel that it was my responsibility to denounce the actions of Brendan Smyth to the police. Now I know with hindsight that I should have done more, but I thought at the time I was doing what I was required to do.”

A somewhat similar situation to to our “sin covering” friend above, don’t you think?

Brady’s eventual statement of public remorse and apology (at last!!) came a few days later on St Patrick’s day, no less, reports the BBC:

“This week a painful episode from my own past has come before me. I have listened to reaction from people to my role in events 35 years ago. I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart. I also apologise to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in.”

It was bloody hard work to get that ‘confession’ out of him…

Brady says ‘this week’ but for the victims it’s been a lifetime.

Now, just today, the New York Times reports more that makes me ask:

Where will the reluctance to face the sin and missteps of the past end?

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

So “several American bishops repeatedly warned them” — Good step, but why didn’t they blow the whistle?
How much worse did it have to get?

Big Questions
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James Cameron calls it as he sees it …

Posted in 25 March 2010
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‘Let me put it this way,’ James Cameron said in an interview last month.
‘I’m happy to piss those guys off. I don’t agree with their worldview.’

Can’t argue with that.

I feel the same way about weasels who try to paint themselves as my ‘competitors’ or ‘peers in the industry’… when they’re no such thing.

Enough said.

Business/Investment
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Point and counter point … bottled water

Posted in 25 March 2010
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Great example of an exposé of ‘Manufactured Demand’ for bottled water …

Followed by a ‘fake journalism’ (complete with ‘noddies’) PR/propaganda fightback by the bottled water manufacturers*…’Good Stewards of the Environment’

How do they keep a straight face?

*Let me know what BWM Report could possibly stand for.

Business/Investment - Media issues
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Branding writ large

Posted in 24 March 2010
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This is the fifth-most-photographed building in New York, the 28th worldwide: the Apple Store 5th Avenue New York City.

Well, it IS cool. Inside and out.

On my first visit it was just starting to rain and Apple Store staff were fitting special rubber covers to the glass steps on the spiral staircase. The shopping experience in these stores is good. San Francisco downtown store was cool in a whole differnent way.

It’s not just a Borders bookshop-type unhurried-take-your-time-look-around-get-involved-with-the-products-thing. It’s more than that.

Ahead of the 5th Ave store on the list of most-photgraphed in NYC: The Empire State Building, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Grand Central Terminal. Gotcha.

(via TUAW)

Business/Investment - Encouragement
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Karl Lagerfield – interviewed by Bruce LaBruce

Posted in 24 March 2010
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Karl Lagerfield - self-portrait
source: Vice Magazine (Click for full size)

When Vice [Magazine] called me last month with an out-of-the-blue offer to fly to Paris and interview the Kaiser himself, Karl Lagerfeld—creative director of the $10 billion Chanel empire, the house of Fendi, and his own eponymous line—I jumped at the chance. I have to confess that I wasn’t an expert about the fabled fashion kingpin prior to Vice’s proposition, … I was duly excited to meet the Man Behind the Fan (which, I would soon discover, has long since been replaced by the Collar), the guru behind the dark glasses, and to try to separate the myth from the reality.

But having now met and spent time with Mr. Lagerfeld, it seems that, as close as I can figure out, the man really is the myth. It’s not that there isn’t any there there; it’s that somehow, by some strange alchemy, the person who descends the stairway of his fashion house, infinitely multiplied by mirrors, has transcended this mortal coil to become a pure creature of creativity.

Lagerfeld is a study in perpetual motion, tirelessly darting between creative endeavors while devouring both history and the ephemeral present, the zeitgeist. A voracious reader and observer of life through books and popular culture, he filters the world into his couture and other creative outlets like a sort of supercomputer. When I suggest to him in the following interview that he may have Asperger syndrome, a rare form of autism characterized by an obsessive-compulsive “disorder” manifested as a kind of genius, he concurs.

Extracts from Karl Lagerfield — interviewed by Bruce LaBruce – Vice Magazine

—
Your best friend is…
He’s dead, too.

What happened to him?
AIDS. That happened 20 years ago.

How did you cope with that whole period? I’m sure you knew so many great people who died of AIDS.
I don’t want to go back through that age. In those days it was a hopeless case.

It was a death sentence.
You may be a bit young to remember. It was horrible. Beyond horrible.

It decimated the fashion world.
It killed a whole generation of people. Continue reading →

Media issues
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Google ‘leaves’ China over censorship

Posted in 23 March 2010
2 Comments »
Good on Google for deciding that censorship was dodgy.

It was always, always dodgy,* but perhaps the ‘commercial imperative’ had driven the free-thinkers at Google to submerge their outrage. ( — which is NOT a long term strategy, as we have discussed in relation to an example closer to home.)

From the Google blog today:

A new approach to China: an update

3/22/2010 12:03:00 PM
On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers.

We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong.

And how sad is this?: (Click on the image to go to the latest status update.)

I'd HATE to think a discussion forum needed to publish a list like this
... users who are blocked or partially blocked etc

* Unless genuine law-breaking is implicated. I’ve had Google drop adsense links to operators infringing my trademarks, and clearly, defamatory comments (real ones) should be expunged.

Big Questions - Media issues
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Fearless: Margaret Moth RIP

Posted in 22 March 2010
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Margaret Moth was the trail-blazing, globe-trotting photojournalist and camera operator whose jaw was blown away by a sniper’s bullet as she and her CNN news crew were traveling through Sarajevo’s infamous Sniper’s Alley in the early 1990s.

Terribly injured, she recovered and eventually went back to work, doing what she did best with tenacity and courage. I recall CNN made a documentary about her appropriately titled Fearless. What a hero. RIP Margaret Moth.

Gutsy. (To be reminded of her today as I fingered ‘courage‘ as something new media needs to learn from ‘traditional’ media, seems a meaningful coincidence.)

CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth, 1951-2010. (Photo: Otago Daily Times)

Read more about Margaret Moth in the Otago Daily Times.

The CNN documentary about her: Fearless is on YouTube in three parts. Start here.

Media issues - Writing/Publishing
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What new media needs to learn from old media

Posted in 22 March 2010
4 Comments »

COURAGE

.

What journalism should be:
Dogged and fearless

Witness, maverick, dissident and finally victim - Russian reporter and campaigner Anna Politkovskaya

Wise words from one of my former editors, Don Rood, reviewing Nothing but the Truth by Anna Politkovskaya on Radio NZ this morning.

Yeah! Damn right. Dogged and fearless.

To proudly call yourself ‘new media‘ and talk about freedom of speech is good.
But recognise that you stand on the shoulders of ‘traditional’ media, and its values — and that you owe it a debt.
.

The truth matters; corruption should be exposed.
If it takes a while, keep at it. Dig.
Don’t be put off, or scared off.

.
That’s what ‘traditional’ media values are: Report the truth without fear or favour. Use them or lose them, I say.
It’s not enough to stand back and watch the train wreck unfolding. (Or blog about it.)
Blow the whistle! Or get out of the way of those who will.

Remember: “Daring: if there was no risk it wouldn’t take guts.”

—

UPDATE: After I heard Don’s comments today, I learned that gutsy, intrepid Kiwi internationally-recognised photojournalist Margaret Moth has just died.

Media issues - Writing/Publishing
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Eloquent beyond words

Posted in 21 March 2010
No Comments »

'Non-Violence' sculpture by Fredrik Reuterswärd. UN Plaza New York.

The image in that last post reminded me: I stood in front of this sculpture in NYC a few years ago on my way to see Leonard Cohen in concert at the Place des Arts in Montreal. (Not my first trip to New York.)

Its power exceeds and surpasses logical argument … if you’re open to it.

Art with a message.

Humbling.

Peter Aranyi at the UN in New York

Big Questions - Encouragement

Why ‘legal action’ can be sooo dangerous …

Posted in 21 March 2010
5 Comments »

Look at the sort of thing comes out in the wash:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses.

It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom’s efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Source: YouTube blog 18 March 2010 regarding Viacom copyright lawsuit against YouTube.

(Getty Imagebank)

One of the lessons this latest worldwide exposure of HYPOCRISY underscores for me is that excitable people threatening lawsuits and alleging ‘conspiracy’ should remember there are always secrets and ‘un-public things’ which they may later desperately regret chasing out of the undergrowth.

It is astonishing the evidence that leaks out of even the tightest cabal and coterie. Continue reading →

Business/Investment - Writing/Publishing
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