Posts Tagged ‘courage’
Keeping your distance
“The only way a reporter should ever look at a politician is down.” — David Broder That’s a pretty harsh line from veteran US political journalist/columnist David Broder, widely regarded as ‘the dean of the Washington press corps’. It’s quoted in a pretty good opinion piece from The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank on how journalists […]
Silence and the abandonment of moral leadership
Wow. Following President Obama’s decision to publicly release the long form of his birth certificate to address Republican crazies, conspiracy theorists and cynical opportunists (or all three like Donald Trump) I read a brief essay by Clarence B Jones which, like others since, squarely placed the hallucinatory ‘controversy’ in racist territory … and also echoed […]
Compulsory ‘uncovering’ of sin
I read this article last week with a shudder. A mother has been jailed after her conviction for child neglect: A mother who knew her partner was sexually violating her two daughters has been jailed for a year for failing to act, in an unprecedented case of child neglect. So, effectively, this individual has been […]
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams
from Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only […]
The sort of spruiker who gives spruikers a bad name
My hero Neil Jenman shares his experience with an Australian spruiker … Interesting about the tie-up between Steven Fagan, his book ‘Accidental Millionaire’ and Carly Crutchfield. Have a read: Nick and Wendy are a delightful young couple. In 2004, after advice from Fagan’s property group, they purchased an apartment in the western Sydney suburb of […]
An insight into sociopaths and liars
This quote, from an excellent Tom Junod piece in Esquire on Murdoch’s Fox News Gruppenführer Roger Ailes, says a LOT about the trouble with trying to shame the manipulative, or liars and con artists … The pundits, the professors, the professional journalists, the left-wingers, the tree huggers, the liberal blogosphere, President Obama — they all […]
Why am I doing this? Muckraking?
Remember Cactus Kate’s description of blogging as “an utterly useless waste of a person’s time” (Soooo well put, Kate!) But her comment, of course, fits into Jonathan Swift’s self-aware description of satire … Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for […]
Bad scene in Egypt — round up the usual suspects
A crackdown on the truth often starts with rounding up the journalists… images from Huffington Post. + UPDATE 5/2/11 Bugger!
Does ANYONE doubt that this guy’s rights have been infringed?
From the BBC today: Julian Assange has told reporters that the US investigation into his Wikileaks organisation was “aggressive” and “illegal”. He went on to say that over 85% of his organisation’s economic resources are spent fighting “technical, legal and political attacks”. Mr Assange was speaking to reporters outside the Suffolk mansion of supporter Vaughan […]
Cher Lloyd: Good on her
A friend of mine spotted this young woman on YouTube — Cher Lloyd — she’s a contestant in the current British ‘X-Factor’. Watch her audition. I like it that she credits the artist, Soulja Boy … and the Keri Hilson ‘version’ of Turn My Swag On she performs. Nice. I like her a lot. She’s […]
What you say ‘No’ to
Sometimes the ‘opportunity’ isn’t worth the cost. Earlier this month there was some discussion about Apple and Facebook not agreeing terms for co-operation… … both Facebook and Apple had spoken about integrating more closely with the new iTunes social network Ping, but Facebook asked for “onerous terms that we could not agree to” regarding Facebook […]
BBC – ‘The Interview’: Tony Blair
I listened to this interview twice last night (as a podcast). I was impressed with Blair and his argument, I have to say. I always thought he was a great communicator, but didn’t expect to be struck, even inspired by his reasoned resoluteness and his thoughts about the challenge of radical Islam and Iran’s […]
Playing along
One evening a little while ago I was driving home and encountered a Police ‘booze bus’ breath-test checkpoint. Cars queued up in a funnel pattern set up with cones and flashing lights … when it was my turn, the police officer reached in through my car window, held the breath screening thingy in front of […]
