Why is it that the only people, seemingly in America, who oppose judging schoolteachers by the performance of their students, are … teachers?

Or at least their unions, who have declared war on the Los Angeles Times for daring to measure teacher effectiveness, and to name names:

The Los Angeles teachers union president said Sunday he was organizing a “massive boycott” of The Times after the newspaper began publishing a series of articles that uses student test scores to estimate the effectiveness of district teachers.

“You’re leading people in a dangerous direction, making it seem like you can judge the quality of a teacher by … a test,” said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which has more than 40,000 members.

Duffy said he would urge other labor groups to ask their members to cancel their subscriptions.

Forgive me, as I’m not a teacher, and I’m childless, but if I’m asked to judge the quality of a teacher at all, by what metric should I judge if not by student performance? By how nice a teacher is during parent-teacher conferences?  By whether she’s a union delegate?  By her students’ self-esteem, even if they can’t multiply 11 by 12?

The Times study allows for, and takes into account, that teachers in different schools are given students of varying preparation and ability, by measuring teachers within individual schools and by using student improvement, as opposed to simple scores, to gauge effectiveness.

But it’s war between the Los Angeles teachers union and the Times.  I believe I’ll walk down to the local big newsstand tomorrow and buy a copy of the Times just to reward the paper for publishing this.

As Alex Tabarrok points out, the Los Angeles school district could derive the same or similar conclusions from the same data, but refuses to do so.  That the Times is doing it should place the paper front and center for a Pulitzer.  Effective teachers deserve to be recognized.  As for ineffective teachers, the right of the taxpayers and parents of Los Angeles to know trumps the right of drones to put in time until the pension vests.

The actual report may be read here.

If you have a Google account, personalize your news settings with a specific search for the term “Greg Packer”.

Then wait:

Greg Packer secured the first spot in line by getting to the storefront at 5 a.m. “I love Al. I love soup. And I can’t wait for that first bowl of soup,” said Packer, who chose chicken vegetable.

Greg Packer couldn’t give a shit about Al, or about Al’s soup.  Greg Packer is a professional “man on the street” who’s appeared in so many media interviews, in which he always “gives good quote” that he’s become a running joke among bloggers.  As Patterico wrote:

[N]othing’s impossible. You might have thought it would be impossible for Greg Packer to get himself quoted in Big Media any more, but you’d be wrong about that…

Whenever you read an “event” or “man on the street” or “trend” story from the media, ask yourself whether it was manufactured from the ground up, whether it’s just filler.  Google the names.  You might be surprised.

Jeffrey Lord and his supporters claim that he is a writer for American Spectator.

They’re lying. Probably for political advantage — out of bare, naked hatred for every thing that makes America great.

How did I discover this outrage? Several ways. First, note in the link above that American Spectator lists Lord as a “contributor,” not as a writer. Also, the page about him says he is an “author,” not a writer. Moreover, I couldn’t find him on this wikipedia page called “Lists of writers.” Furthermore, Merriam-Webster defines “writer” as “one who writes stock options,” and I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that Lord writes stock options.

Therefore, even though in one manner of speaking he “writes,” and even though he uses his own name (which I am recently given to understand is the sine qua non of credibility and literary excellence), he’s not a writer, and nobody ought to read him.

There. I’ve constructed an irrefutable logical edifice.

How did I learn to do so?

Why, from Jeffrey Lord himself.

See, Lord wrote — though not as a writer — that controversial former federal employee Shirley Sherrod is a liar. Why is she a liar? Well, in the course of discussing race in America, Sherrod claimed that a relative of hers, Bobby Hall, was lynched in the South. But Lord knows, that’s not right. Ask the Supreme Court itself. Here’s how they describe what happened to Bobby Hall:

This case involves a shocking and revolting episode in law enforcement. Petitioner Screws was sheriff of Baker County, Georgia. He enlisted the assistance of petitioner Jones, a policeman, and petitioner Kelley, a special deputy, in arresting Robert Hall, a citizen of the United States and of Georgia. The arrest was made late at night at Hall’s home on a warrant charging Hall with theft of a tire. Hall, a young negro about thirty years of age, was handcuffed and taken by car to the courthouse. As Hall alighted from the car at the courthouse square, the three petitioners began beating him with their fists and with a solid-bar blackjack about eight inches long and weighing two pounds. They claimed Hall had reached for a gun and had used insulting language as he alighted from the car. But after Hall, still handcuffed, had been knocked to the ground, they continued to beat him from fifteen to thirty minutes until he was unconscious. Hall was then dragged feet first through the courthouse yard into the jail and thrown upon the floor, dying. An ambulance was called, and Hall was removed to a hospital, where he died within the hour and without regaining consciousness. There was evidence that Screws held a grudge against Hall, and had threatened to “get” him.

Aha! sayeth the Lord. There’s nothing in there about lynching. It doesn’t even mention a rope. He was beaten to death, you big dummy. Black folks and their exaggerations! QED.

Now, people like Radley Balko — not to mention Lord’s own colleagues at the Spectator, might lack the unique mental agility of a Lord. They’re insisting on looking at statutes, and actual definitions, to show that “lynching” is a term used to describe mob murders of all sorts, not just ones accomplished with a rope.

But Balko and his ilk forget that in the year of our Lord, there is one supreme authority on the meaning of words, including “lynch.”

I refer, of course, to HUMPTY. MOTHERFUCKING. DUMPTY.

`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’

Make no mistake that our Lord is a master. So “lynched” means what he wants it to mean.

That’s why he embarked on a furious, indignant defense of his definition of “lynched”, snapping at his detractors. In the course of that defense, he informed us that (1) even if there was no rope, it couldn’t be a lynching, because only three people did it, and that’s not a “mob”, and (2) the Supreme Court said that the murder was “under the color of law,” meaning that they had legal authority to do it, so it couldn’t be a lynching.

Now petty detractors might argue that anti-lynching bills of the time defined “mob” as three or more people. But Lord thinks that’s not what it means, and that’s the only relevant point.

Petty detractors might point out that “under color of law” means, and has always meant, under pretense of official right, not under actual official right. Hence, when the Supreme Court took up the case of the 1964 murder of civil rights activists Michael Henry Schwerner, James Earl Chaney and Andrew Goodman by Mississippi law enforcement, and agreed that they had acted “under color of law,” the Court was not suggesting that the murders were lawful. Of course, that definition of “color of law” is an obscure issue, known only to lawyers and marginally literate people capable of reading the newspaper without reducing it to an illegible pulp with their OMG-A-NEGRO-IS-PRESIDENT spittle. Moreover, if Jeff Lord is a master of the language, what stops him from being a master of what the law is as well?

Other detractors might assert that all of this misses the point — that only a lunatic would quibble over the use of the term “lynched” to describe a brutal racist murder in the first place, and that such quibbling demonstrates a gravely disordered approach to the subject. Lord knows, that ain’t right. History, and the people in it, are only there to advance our current political agenda. Even a non-writer like Jeffrey Lord can tell you that.

He died in bed of old age, something Richard Nixon, who put Schorr on the famous “enemies list,” wouldn’t have wanted.

I didn’t agree with Schorr on much of anything.  He was a fossilized New Deal liberal who was probably amazed that the computer keyboard his interns used to type his NPR commentary didn’t require ribbon replacement.  But he never trusted the government, whether the White House occupant had an R or a D by his name.  And his voice was an audio definition of the word “avuncular.”

There probably isn’t much muck in heaven, but if there is, Schorr will no doubt enjoy raking it up.

Thanks to Dave Weigel, who is presently homeless, for the tip.

In a past life, Lee Bollinger was a lawyer and law professor specializing in First Amendment issues.  He was the author of scholarly works advocating and celebrating freedom of the press.  Today, Lee Bollinger is the president of Columbia University, which collects millions of dollars from students looking for jobs as journalists.

One suspects that past life Lee Bollinger must be spinning in his grave at what present day Lee Bollinger is writing in the Wall Street Journal:

Both the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are undertaking studies of ways to ensure the steep economic decline faced by newspapers and broadcast news does not deprive Americans of the essential information they need as citizens. One idea under consideration is enhanced public funding for journalism.

In other words, Bollinger wants a bailout for journalism.  Someone’s got to hire all of those J-school grads, and the newspapers sure aren’t doing it now.

But perhaps bailout’s not the best term.  A “bailout” is hopefully a singular event, like a bridge loan to help a friend get back on his feet.  One time only, unless you’re Chrysler.  What Bollinger actually proposes is more like the farm subsidy, an ongoing, perpetual wealth transfer from taxpayers to a favored class.

Bollinger confesses unease.

The idea of public funding for the press stirs deep unease in American culture. To many it seems inconsistent with our strong commitment, embodied in the First Amendment, to having a free press capable of speaking truth to power and to all of us. This press is a kind of public trust, a fourth branch of government. Can it be trusted when the state helps pay for it?

I submit that a better question would be, “Can the public trust the government not to dominate and control the press when Congress is writing the checks?”  Why not ask a scientist!

Of course Bollinger’s question makes me uneasy as well, as does his inability to answer it.  He poses it, just to show kids back in the free speech hood that he hasn’t sold out to The Man, then proceeds to, well, sell out to The Man.

American journalism is not just the product of the free market, but of a hybrid system of private enterprise and public support. By the middle of the last century, daily newspapers were becoming natural monopolies in cities and communities across the country.

They did it by selling the public what it wanted, and selling it better than the competition.  Not with a handout coerced from people who didn’t want to buy their product.

Publishers and editors drew on the revenue to develop highly specialized expertise that enhanced coverage of economics, law, architecture, medicine, science and technology, foreign affairs and many other fields.

Again, they earned that revenue by selling customers a quality product at an affordable price, just as GM once did. The same way that Studebaker once dominated the horse buggy industry.

Ironically, we already depend to some extent on publicly funded foreign news media for much of our international news—especially through broadcasts of the BBC and BBC World Service on PBS and NPR. Such news comes to us courtesy of British citizens who pay a TV license fee to support the BBC and taxes to support the World Service. The reliable public funding structure, as well as a set of professional norms that protect editorial freedom, has yielded a highly respected and globally powerful journalistic institution.

But that’s the United Kingdom!  The British government is too honorable to interfere with the BBC.  What about a country where the people elect Texas oilmen, or Chicago machine politicians, to high office?

There are examples of other institutions in the U.S. where state support does not translate into official control.  The most compelling are our public universities and our federal programs for dispensing billions of dollars annually for research.

Is that a fact, Mr. Bollinger?

To take a very current example, we trust our great newspapers to collect millions of dollars in advertising from BP while reporting without fear or favor on the company’s environmental record only because of a professional culture that insulates revenue from news judgment.

I have a counter-theory.

My counter-theory is that for years, perhaps decades, BP ran a slipshod, dangerous operation in the gulf (you do remember that the American arm of British Petroleum is a merger, that there was once a company known as “Gulf Oil”?), and that for years, perhaps decades, our great newspapers did not report one single, solitary fucking word about BP/Gulf’s environmental record.  Partially because our great newspapers accepted millions of dollars in advertising revenue from BP/Gulf, and partially because reporting on oil rig safety hazards isn’t sexy, unless there’s an oil rig disaster.  Combine the two, and you have a snooze story (“There hasn’t been a spill.  Can’t you find a dead bird?”) that alienates a major advertiser.

Now imagine the government as the dominant partner with big journalism:  “Problems with the Minerals and Mine Agency?  There hasn’t been a spill.  Can’t you find a dead coal miner?”

As for why the papers are reporting on BP/Gulf’s environmental and safety records now, well, DUH.  The people demand it, and if BP complains, the New York Times and Washington Post will write a story about editorial threats from a despised foreign corporation, earning a Pulitzer, and the plaudits of people like Lee Bollinger and Barack Obama in the process.

Speaking of the gulf, I commend CNN, which has been nearly alone among big media types in seriously complaining about government restrictions in reporting on the disaster.  Would CNN have the guts to do so if it was expecting a big check from a very political administration at the end of the quarter?  Probably, but I wonder…

Or consider another area where we have well established mechanisms of government support for even the most oppositional views: defense counsel in our courts, where government-paid lawyers (including those in uniform military courts) will do their utmost to undermine cases brought by the government itself. Playing the role of calling our government to account is an accepted ethic of the legal profession despite the political hostility it can sometimes generate.

You flatter me Mr. Bollinger.  You know I’m a lawyer too.

But riddle me this, Batman:  Government pays for indigent defense because it’s constitutionally required to do so.   The logic of Gideon, which I accept, is that when the government pursues the poor criminal with the sword of its own attorneys, due process and the right to counsel require that the poor criminal be provided a shield with which to defend himself.

But the poor don’t have, constitutionally, a right to newspapers.  The Constitution only guarantees freedom of the press, not a free press. Or does it?  Should the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, highbrow papers, be required to hand out free editions to poor people in the Bronx and Compton?  That’s a helluva subsidy, don’t you think?

And if there is such a requirement, shouldn’t the Timeses be required to report on matters of interest to the poor? You know, trash media, things the poor care about, things like Lindsay Lohan’s jail sentence and Britney Spears’ fat ass and John Edwards’ marital infidelity.

Well, scratch that last one.  The Times on both coasts had plenty of opportunities to report on Edwards but refused, even though the work had been done for them.  Maybe that kind of business judgment is why the Enquirer has cash to pay for stories, while the Times, New York and Los Angeles, need a taxpayer handout.  Still, if the people are writing the checks, don’t they have the right to demand bread and circuses, through funded mandates and regulation, from those who accept the money?  I rather think they do.

To me a key priority is to strengthen our public broadcasting role in the global arena. In today’s rapidly globalizing and interconnected world, other countries are developing a strong media presence. In addition to the BBC, there is China’s CCTV and Xinhua news …

Funny you should bring up the Chinese media while claiming that state subsidies won’t impair freedom of the press.

Oh well, as others have pointed out, you’ll come to your senses around 2012.  Under the Palin-Huckabee administration.

Today is “Take Your Dog To Work Day.” If I had wished to do so, I could have taken one of my dogs to work.  I practice, by choice, in a small laid back insurance defense firm, having left a larger law firm (not Skadden by any means) because I could see myself dying of a heart attack at the age of fifty if I’d stayed with those backstabbing stuffed shirts.

The money isn’t as good, but I have a stereo in my office, more unusual art than what I could have displayed at the big firm, and I can take my dog to work.

As a hobby, I write for a “Take Your Dog To Work” blog.  I can write about anything I wish.  I can cuss up a storm.  I can abuse and vilify anyone I choose, and I can write under a pseudonym, like the nameless coward that I am.

Dave Weigel found out, the hard way, that you can’t take your dog to work at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher and Flom.

Weigel, long one of the more entertaining journalist / bloggers at Reason and later the Washington Independent, “resigned” today from his new gig as the Washington Post’s blogger in chief on the conservative political movement.  Weigel, as anyone who can read could tell, is no conservative though he covers the movement well.  His resignation was prompted by the revelation of several emails he’d written, he thought in private, concerning Matt Drudge and the followers of Ron Paul.  As it turned out Weigel trusted the wrong people, and the emails were revealed.

Weigel, coming from a “Take Your Dog To Work” background at Reason, a “Take Your Dog To Work” political magazine if ever there was one, made the mistake of taking his dog to work at the Washington Post, which is Skadden Arps.

The dog promptly shit on the rug, humped an important client who was allergic to fur, knocked over the aquarium filled with rare Japanese koi, then vomited fish bones all over the managing partner’s office.  And so Dave Weigel first apologized, then got to carry his belongings out of the office in a cardboard box.

It’s as simple as that.  Some claim that Weigel was fired for “having an opinion”. That’s shit on the rug, and it won’t come out.  Weigel was fired for forgetting that you can’t take your dog to work at Skadden Arps, no matter what they tell new associates about the wonderful lifestyle they’ll enjoy working at the world’s most prestigious law firm.

No doubt Weigel will land on his feet.  He’s talented and he’s smart.  But he’d be better off at a “Take Your Dog To Work” magazine or blog.

I’ve wondered why some of Weigel’s former colleagues, such as Radley Balko or Katherine Mangu Ward, aren’t working for the Post or the Times.  “Shit man, Balko’s a thousand times smarter than David Brooks, and a much better reporter than James Risen.  He should be in the big leagues.”

But they probably enjoy taking their dogs to work now and then, around people who actually like dogs and won’t be offended by the smell.

The history of the relationship between print journalism and the internet is largely a history of grumpy old men being made to look like fools. Pierre Salinger was merely an early example.

That is not because the internet makes reporting better. The internet is an excellent research and content delivery system. But it’s strictly garbage in, garbage out. Nobody gets smarter or better at writing or more insightful just because they launch a blog. They’re still the same dopes they were back when they were pontificating at the corner tavern to booze-addled friends. Whether they produce better and more reliable reporting than people who work at newspapers depends upon their individual abilities and initiative, and that of the reporters, not on the delivery vehicle they use.

It’s attitude that makes fools of people with pretenses to journalism. Bloggers who believe a thing is right because they write it, or because they are not “MSM,” are fools because of attitude. So are reporters who believe that they are right, and bloggers wrong, because the reporters have an “official” byline and an established paper-and-ink delivery system, and bloggers only have computers and whatever slovenly surroundings they live in [for the record, I am wearing pants].

Case in point: today’s fool, James Risen. James Risen is a New York Times reporter (and thus at perilously high risk for self-seriousness) who wrote a recent front-page story about the discovery of vast mineral deposits in Afghanistan. Various bloggers pointed out that this was old news and that the value ascribed to the find was fanciful. Risen responded with a thoroughly embarrassing hissy fit:

“Bloggers should do their own reporting instead of sitting around in their pajamas,” Risen said.

“The thing that amazes me is that the blogosphere thinks they can deconstruct other people’s stories,” Risen told Yahoo! News during an increasingly hostile interview, which he called back to apologize for almost immediately after it ended. “Do you even know anything about me? Maybe you were still in school when I broke the NSA story, I don’t know. It was back when you were in kindergarten, I think.” (Risen and fellow Times reporter Eric Lichtblau shared a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program; this reporter was 33 years old at the time.)

All the tropes of what journalism is, rather than what it should be, lie there for the world to see: the appeal to the authority (my information is reliable because I work for the New York Times! I have awards! I’m old!), the appeal to ridicule (bloggers live in their momma’s basement!), and the quick and substance-free dismissal of dissent. But whether Risen’s story is accurate or inaccurate, or new news or old news, or part of a Pentagon propaganda campaign in which Risen is a useful idiot or not, do not depend on where Risen works or how many awards he has or whether he’s been doing this since his detractors were pantsless due to infancy rather than due to indolence and design. It has nothing to do with whether the bloggers are not “mainstream” or are inexperienced or have no awards.

It has to do with the facts. Whether the mineral finds were reported before is an objective fact. Whether the $1 trillion estimate of the value of the finds is bullshit or not is a combination of fact and opinion that can be probed by careful examination and discussions with subject matter experts. if the bloggers can better cite facts, with proof, then their work is better, whatever their status as “official” journalists. If Risen can better support his reporting with facts, and proof, then his work is better, whether or not he’s part of a biased and culturally archaic institution.

Risen’s chief mistake is saying what I suspect many journalists are thinking.

Contrary to some gun-jumping obituary monkey who probably went to Stanford, John Wooden, the greatest and classiest basketball coach in history, is not dead yet.

Don’t tell the Washington Post.  They already know.  They just haven’t updated their headline to reflect it.

The headline was published around 9pm last night.  It was still an obituary at 7am, eastern time, this morning.

An “activist” is a vigorous advocate for a cause.  Famous activists have included Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Lech Walesa, and Leo Tolstoy.

Scott Roeder is not an activist. He is a “murderer,” or most accurately, an “assassin”.  Please amend your headlines accordingly.

I recognize that the appearance of objectivity (as opposed to actual objectivity) is important to journalists, but please, show a little perspective.

Next week, we’ll discuss the word “militant”.

“He wants to congratulate you on calling the Coakley election ten hours early.”

Congratulations to Boston’s excellent independent newspaper, the Boston Phoenix, for catching this.

(The Boston Globe is a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York Times Company.)

I’ve carped before about the prevailing legal illiteracy of the media, and the various atrocities against accuracy it produces. There are bright islands in the dark sea — journalists who educated themselves about law before reporting on it, and who take the time to craft a story that accurately conveys complex legal issues. Those journalists are a pleasure to read, and I often learn things from them. But they are not the norm. The norm is a mix of willful ignorance and laziness.

The Polanski affair reveals that there is another element to this prevailing legal illiteracy: some journalists’ unhealthy contempt for the intelligence of their audience. Patterico has pulled back the curtain to reveal a bit of this unbecoming contempt in the course of his dialogue with Washington Post blogger Anne Applebaum. Applebaum wrote a post on the Washington Post blog that made several mistakes about the case, and further said several things that were materially misleading. Among the mistakes and misleading statements: Applebaum said “there is evidence of judicial misconduct in the original trial” when there was no trial because Polanski entered a guilty plea. Applebaum wrote “there is evidence that Polanski did not know her real age,” which may be true, but is grotesquely misleading for a journalist to write without also noting that Polanski admitted under oath during his guilty plea that he knew the girl was thirteen at the time. Applebaum writes of “Polanski’s crime — statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl,” but fails to note that Polanski was charged with both statutory rape and rape, that the girl’s grand jury testimony made it clear that it was rape, and that even in her recent press statements she has maintained that she said no and Polanski ignored it. (Perhaps Applebaum, like Whoopi Goldberg, thinks it was not rape-rape.) And so on.

Patterico is an exceptionally able and dogged investigative blogger; I say that even though I frequently disagree with him on issues of substance. He has engaged in a dialogue with Applebaum culminating today in this post, in which Applebaum defends her inaccuracies in flat-out appalling terms.

I used the word “trial” in the layman’s sense – trial meaning a judicial investigation, court proceedings etc – and see no need to correct, as it would confuse the matter further.

The notion that a professional wordsmith can’t convey the difference between a trial and a guilty plea without “confusing the matter” is sheer lunacy. The credible possibilities are (1) Applebaum didn’t know it was a plea, because she didn’t investigate adequately before writing, making her careless; (2) Applebaum didn’t really grasp the difference between a trial or a plea, making her ignorant; or (3) Applebaum thought her readers couldn’t grasp the difference between a trial and a plea, making her contemptuous, or (4) Applebaum thought that accurately describing the event as a guilty plea would not serve the argument she was trying to make, making her dishonest. Based on the “confuse the matter’ language and general tone of her response to Patterico, I think the most likely explanation is #3: she thinks her audience is dumb.

Her defense of her statement about Polanski’s knowledge of the victim’s age is just as appalling:

Yes, there is “evidence” that Polanski did not know the girls age – or that he was told but did not believe it: He has told people since that, anyway. Pictures of her from the time show a girl who could be anywhere from 12-25. “There is evidence” is a broad expression and I see no need to correct that either, as again it would simply be confusing.

Either this is dishonest, or it reveals a paternalistic attitude towards readers. The most powerful evidence of whether or not Polanski knew that his victim was thirteen is his admission, under oath, that he knew. Saying that “there is evidence that he did not know” — without revealing that he admitted that he knew — is incredibly deceitful. If it’s not intentionally deceitful, then it reveals Applebaum’s attitude that, as a journalist, her role is to decide what facts are credible and what facts are not and present only the facts that she believes to her audience, even if that means concealing sworn testimony that contradicts her conclusion. Again, that suggests that she thinks that her audience is just too dumb to come to the correct conclusion themselves unless she sifts the evidence for them and presents it as an advocate.

Her big-picture conclusion is also revealing:

In any case, none of these particular issues has much to do with my main point, which were that this was a confusing story and that it’s very peculiar that the Swiss suddenly decided to arrest him now. I do not condone his original action in any way, and didn’t write that I did, either: However, I dislike the reduction of complicated stories to simple facts. And please don’t write back that “he drugged and raped a child” because that is not an accurate description of what happened.

But she unquestionably does like reducing complicated stories to simple facts. That’s what she did, and it’s clearly what she thinks it’s her role to do. She asserts that it’s not an accurate description to say that Polanski drugged and raped a child, yet that’s exactly what the child in question testified that he did. A responsible journalist might carefully marshal all of the facts and lay out a case of why the evidence does not support the victim’s grand jury testimony that Polanski gave her alcohol and a quaalude and then, over her repeated objections, penetrated her vaginally and anally. But that’s not what Applebaum’s doing, and not what she’s saying. Applebaum’s just saying that she has concluded that’s not the real story, and so she wants to report that conclusion to her readers. It appears that she does so based upon the presumption that her readers cannot evaluate that themselves based on the facts — that the evaluation would be, in Applebaum’s repeated words, “confusing.”

Between Patterico and Applebaum, Patterico comes out of this looking far more like a competent and trustworthy journalist. And, again, I say that as someone who frequently disagrees with — and sometimes really dislikes — his opinions. Read the series of posts; they are a great dissection of journalistic practice.

Want to promote a cause or trend?  Want to catapult your pet issue from obscurity to fame?  Why not befriend a reporter for the New York Times?

Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you’ll find quitters.

Specifically, New York Times reporter Virginia Hefferman asked a bunch of her friends. Five of them had quit Facebook.  From this, she projects yet another nationwide trend story, an “exodus” in fact, even as she concedes:

The exodus is not evident from the site’s overall numbers. According to comScore, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the United States in July.

The site’s overall numbers, those stubborn facts of course, do not prevent Hefferman from characterizing Facebook as an impending “ghost town”.  Like Pauline Kael, who was shocked that George McGovern lost the 1972 election because no one she knew voted for Nixon, the Times is happy to project the future from the behavior of a few New Yorkers so isolated from the mainstream that, well, everyone I know has a subscription to the sunday New York Times.

Next trend projection from the Times:  Americans overwhelmingly reject the fiction of Stephen King and the music of Beyonce in favor of Don DeLillo and Polvo, because that’s what everyone I know is reading or playing.

Ken is a fortyish professional on the west coast.  Almost every day Ken reads something in the newspaper, or on the web, then pulls up the dashboard of his group weblog and writes about it.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco bay area, Ezra, who works at a non-profit agency, has experiences with people in his life.  Invariably, Ezra writes a blogpost on a weblog he shares with other authors, to discuss his experiences.

And on the east coast, Patrick, a lawyer, copes with the demands of a law practice.  He remembers when things were less hectic, complaining that he had more free time before he joined the legion of Americans who now compulsively write about things and ideas at a group weblog.

These individuals are part of a national trend in which Americans of all ages, classes, races, and genders participate in the modern phenomenon that is the group weblog…

Sound contrived?  Well it is.  If one takes a sample of people who are strongly connected in some fashion, or have a deep interest in some activity, and excludes all others, their anecdotes can be spun as any sort of trend or a new problem society must face.  The story writes itself.

Of course if I do it, it’s dishonest wanking.  But when the New York Times does it, it’s quality journalism.

Newspapers are dying a slow, painful death, at least in their present form. Fortunately they have the chance for what we all aspire to: death with dignity, death on their own terms, death without desperate, pathetic bargaining with God.

Will they take that opportunity?

Oh, of COURSE not. Via Politico:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

Yep, you read that right. The Washington Post is selling its access to Obama Administration officials — facilitated by its journalists — to the lobbying community. The come-on is as whorish as anything ever uttered from a street corner through an open car window:

“Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of [Washington Post CEO and Publisher] Katharine Weymouth assures it. What is guaranteed is a collegial evening, with Obama administration officials, Congress members, business leaders, advocacy leaders and other select minds typically on the guest list of 20 or less.”

Oooh, hotttttt. But wear a rubber. These folks ain’t clean.

Edited to add: Politico has edited its article to add the Washington Post’s response, which is, in so many words, that the flier was sent by their business division without the knowledge of the news division and without being vetted. I have two responses: (1) I find it very difficult to believe that the business division would commit specific personnel to participation in an event without getting some level of buy-in from the participants, especially with so much money on the line, and (2) even if it was only the business division’s idea, the business division is part of the enterprise and makes major decisions impacting the state of journalism at the Post all the time, and this incident speaks volumes.

Edited again: the Twitter feed at #WaPoDeals is quickly becoming pants-wetting hilarious.

Another edit: The WaPo editorial response.

In the gossip-driven feeding frenzy that keeps alive the tawdry tale of rising and declining wannabe John Edwards (now with video), the New York Daily News wins quip of the day :

Hunter had been hired by the Edwards campaign to videotape the candidate’s movements, but this one is said to have shown him taking positions that weren’t on his official platform.

The commodification of sexual scandal is nothing new, of course, and in times like these more than ever the media are motivated to regard as “news” whatever will maximize sales.  Thus, there’s a regrettable tendency to spew rather than eschew.

What’s cheapened in yellowing press, beyond the players’ tattered reputations, is a factor arguably worth conserving: the vitality of sexual allusion as a literary device.

For some of their puissance, these worthy tropes depend on indirection– a wink, a nod, a knowing glance.  But in a cultural milieu where everyone seems to say entirely too much altogether, and where even the king is in the altogether, it’s hard for prose to play allusively without seeming turgid.

So it goes, too, with visual and spatial art.  Around 1920, that brash jokester Duchamp tagged a mustachioed Mona with a vulgar schoolyard pun.

Marcel Duchamp, ca. 1919 and then on and on.

(For the Gallically disinclined: reading the letters aloud in French makes one say “Elle a chaud au cul” — an observation unsuited to polite company.  French lends itself to this sort of pun, as a legion of Speak-and-Spell-wielding youth will testify.)

On a mission to shock the bourgeoisie, Duchamp kicked off a new wave in the longtime cheapening of time-honored bawd.  Just prior to this, but almost entirely without force in Duchamp’s proto-postmodern context, was the sexual allusiveness of Degas:

Degas, Dancers at the Bar, 1900, Phillips Collection

So frequent were his graphical forays into the world of dance that a representation by Degas of some ballerina stretching thus, or adjusting her slipper, or otherwise assuming a complex or lyrical stance seems straightforwardly representational.  Similarly simple seem the shiny statuettes (by the seashore):

Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot, ca. 1900, Metropolitan Museum

We’re in territory not far from Duchamp but several steps removed from the schoolyard.  In French, the expression “prendre son pied” (to take one’s foot) means “to experience pleasure” and has the specifically sexual connotation of orgasm.  This erotic idiom is often used figuratively nowadays to express with hyperbole any sort of pleasure at all– Q: “Did you like the new Star Trek movie?”  A: “Ah oui, j’ai pris mon pied!”.  (This is similar to the cavalier way English speakers toss around the suffix “-gasm”, as in “Geekgasm“.)

By way of this idiom, Degas invests some, and therefore all, of his graphical and plastic dancers with another layer of allusion to intensify the already erotic connotations of classical dance.  The indirection is not subtle, but it is somewhat less obvious and grating than “LHOOQ” since the foot-touching gesture makes literal sense on its own terms within the theatrical context: sometimes, a touching of the foot is just a touching of the foot.

This brings us, of course, to pirates.  How did it come to pass that “to take one’s foot” became an idiom for orgasm?  Prior to the Revolution, and therefore prior to the metric system, the French used measurements akin to the imperial system.  When corsairs went to divide their spoils after a stint of rapine, each would naturally demand his portion of the whole.  The allotted part, by convention, was a foot-high mound of booty.  No, really.

Taking his foot of gold was the pirate’s pleasure.  Since not everything that happens in Tortuga stays in Tortuga, taking the foot gradually became anyone’s pleasure in anything, and eventually ended up a punchline in Amélie.  And just as a noble, sexy, piraty bit of bawd has by now been stripped bare by its broad overuse in French, so too has the vitality of allusiveness in our mother tongue suffered under the weight of too popular a press.  We’ve seen enough; it’s time to close your eyes and think of English.

So let’s insist that the media fanning the torrid flames of political passion and self-immolation avert their gaze from gossip.  Let’s demand actual journalistic attention to news worthy of the name, even if the purveyors of parley have to trim their sales.

Eventually, you have to put your foot down.