Month: April 2006

Pensito Review: Headline Style, Change We Won’t

Buck Banks

Heads up: The Yoda-like grammar of the headline of this post is an extreme example of the kind of undumb headlines you, gentle reader, can continue to expect from the crack editorial staff of Pensito Review. Why do we feel compelled to issue a reassuring statement like that to the smart people who visit our humble “politics & media” site?

Because of Google. And Yahoo. And RSS feeds. And newsbots.

See, there was this article in the New York Times on Sunday about how news organizations were experimenting with “dumbing down” their headlines so they would make more sense in a list of headlines supplied in an RSS feed.

‘The heck with that!’
– Ed Canale

So news organizations large and small have begun experimenting with tweaking their Web sites for better search engine results. But software bots are not your ordinary readers: They are blazingly fast yet numbingly literal-minded. There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing. The software is a logical, sequential, left-brain reader, while humans are often right brain.

In newspapers and magazines, for example, section titles and headlines are distilled nuggets of human brainwork, tapping context and culture. “Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that,’ ” observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.

Well, we here at Pensito Review join Mr. Canale in a hearty “The heck with that � squared!”

Lest you worry that we will now begin to mine the arcane or bust our frontal lobes coming up with cool headlines, we would like to take a moment to explore Pensito Review’s history of headline hepness. Here are a few examples from the archives:

  • “Doctor My Ears,” heads a post by Trish kvetching about how reporters always use the title “Dr.” before Condoleeza Rice’s name.
  • “The White House Hopes You Won’t Read This,” is a self-referential head from Jon about how the WH released news of its social program cuts Friday evening � after the press corps had gone home.
  • “Woodward Wants to Be Sweetheart of Cellblock C,” was my take on Bob Woodward’s sweet offer to do some of press paragon Judith Miller’s prison time.
  • A truly great head that didn’t overtax the typesetters was Trish’s “MSM MIA,” about how the mainstream media missed a critical story.
  • Jon’s “The Lying Liar�s Dumb Lie” headline demonstrates a classic rhetorical conceit involving repetition that has a Greek name that I’ve forgotten.
  • And my “Bush: Et Tu, Silvio?” just shows we can do classical literary references in other languages.

So fear not, noble, and hopefully regular, reader. We ain’t dumbing down our headlines for Google, though we do promise to lay off the obnoxious Yoda grammatical constructions.

More Whispering about Cheney’s Resignation

Jon Ponder

From Andy’s lips to God’s ears:

The rumormill is once again aflutter with talk that Vice President Dick Cheney will soon be sacrificed as the Busheviks bow to their plummeting poll numbers, and the ReTHUGlican-controlled Congress, with just a 35% approval rating, fights for its political survival. As the chief architect of the Iraq fiasco, and the poster-boy for divisiveness in Washington, Cheney, as I first predicted here February 15, will be forced to resign….

By June, it’s likely that Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour or perennial hopeful John McCain will be United States vice-president. Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets.

If it’s that mushmouthed Goober Haley Barbour, I will have an embolism. I have long predicted it would be McCain — not by Bush’s choice, of course. McCain would be the choice of the GOP money men in New York because he is theoretically electable (while Guiliani will never survive the South Carolina primary).

There is also the eery way that Cheney’s resignation would track along the profile of the end of the Nixon presidency, when Nixon’s first veep, Spiro Agnew resigned because of corruption charges from his term as governor of Maryland.

I still believe that no senator can be elected president in 2008, but as vice president, McCain would be in a much better position — especially if Bush, like Nixon, were to resign, leaving the presidency to McCain.

(One interesting twist: the governor of Arizona is a Democrat and, unless Arizona law prevents it, she might well replace McCain with a Dem.)

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The political doctrine which has represented the loftiest endeavor toward common life is liberal democracy…. Liberalism — it is well to recall this today — is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities, and hence is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet.

— José Ortega y Gasset, (1883-1955), Spanish philosopher

PA-O7: Wacky Weldon Trashes Cancer Child, Supports Coronation of Moonie Cult Leader As ‘Messiah’ — and Gets an Earful from His District

Jon Ponder

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania is one of a handful of florid, sputtering, endomorphic GOP House members — like Duncan Hunter, R-California, James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, and Howard Coble, R-N.C. — who look like they could explode at any minute.

Weldon’s pet topic is the purported Able-Danger warnings about 9/11 that, if true, would conveniently pin the blame for the attacks precisely where the GOP has always wanted it: on Bill Clinton. Get Weldon talking about Able-Danger and soon there’s more spittle flying than in one of Chris Matthew’s rants about Hillary Clinton.

After 20 years in the House, Weldon is facing serious competition for his PA-07 seat, and the challenge has already brought out his true colors. When a Democratic opponent, retired Adm. Joe Sestak, was dealing with his four-year-old daughter’s diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor, Rep. Weldon couldn’t resist piling on:

Weldon also suggested Sestak should have sent his daughter to a hospital in Philadelphia or Delaware, rather than the Washington hospital.

I guess this is how Rove Republicans say, “Best wishes to your little girl. Hope she gets well soon.”

And then there was Weldon’s attendance at a Republican-oriented event in U.S. government-owned building in which cult-leader Rev. Sun Yung Moon, publisher of the GOP’s Washington Times newspaper, crowned himself God:

An example of the wacko side: Weldon’s presence at a Washington ceremony at which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned as “humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

Those aren’t my words. Those are the words of the Unification Church, which sponsored the 2004 event at the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Weldon, at first, denied he was present. Later, when a videotape was produced showing him there, he said he had left before the Rev. Moon was, well, deified.

My name is Rev. Moon, but you can call me God.

My colleage Buck might say, “Lord, it is time to call Curt home.” But our friend Charlie, a student at Swarthmore College, which is in Weldon’s district, speaks for everyone who would like Weldon to endure some of what he’s dished out before Jesus calls him home:

[…]

‘Yes, I Hear the Protests’

Jon Ponder

“Yes, I hear the protests, and I can understand why. I can understand why people are concerned about war. Nobody likes war, particularly me.

I knew exactly what was going to happen when I committed these troops into harm’s way. I knew there would be — people would lose their life. I knew I would be trying to comfort mothers and fathers and grieving wives. I knew exactly what was coming. And if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t have sent them. And if I didn’t think we would succeed in Iraq, I’d pull them out.

— President George W. Bush, April 10, 2006

Poll: Another 3 Points Down for Bush in ABC/WaPo Survey, Another New Low — But Still Astronomically High for Such a Bad President

Jon Ponder

The biggest risk to our national security is not terrorists (although terrorism is a close second). It is the collective delusion of one-third of our fellow citizens that President Bush is doing a good job:

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll… found that 38 percent of the public approved of the job Bush is doing as president, down 3 percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling on this key measure since he became president. Sixty percent disapproved of his performance.

Christians Sue for the Right to Hate

Jon Ponder

If I were a Christian, I don’t know if I could stand the mud that Christ’s message is being dragged through:

There is a growing campaign among Christians to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment.

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she’s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”

In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free.

If you’re a Christian reading this, you’re probably thinking, “Well, these are extremist Christians. They’ve got nothing to do with me.

As an outsider looking in, I see them as part of your group that is besmirching you all. Fundamentalist Christians are making your religion synonymous with hatred, just as fundamentalist Muslims are making Islam synonymous with terror.

Moderate and liberal Muslims have been just as silent about the disgracing of Islam as moderate and liberal Christians have been silent on the degradation of Christ’s message of love, tolerance and avoiding judging the sins of others.

Christianity has a martyrdom ethos that is bred to bone from the birth — it was part of the training of 1st Century Christians to prepare for death in the Roman arenas. Today, 1900 years later, when an outside group tries to pressure a Christian group, it fulfills the Christian group’s need to be persecuted. The only way these modern-day Pharisees can be stopped is by saner voices from within their religion.

Something like 80 percent of Americans (250,000,000) claim to be Christians, but evangelicals only make up 10 percent of the country or 30,000,000. That’s about eight non-evangelicals to one.

Why the silence? If fundamentalists are so outnumbered by “real” Christians, why is it that we only hear from the taliban wing?

It boils down to this, as trite as it may sound: What would Jesus do?

Santos Would Have Won Florida

Trish

I was surprised to see the folks at NBC award Florida to Vinick in the West Wing presidential election, even before Leo’s untimely death.

This only shows how pervasive the whole red state/blue state stereotypes have become, and how, like most generalizations and simplifications, they are both wrong and self-perpetuating.

Gore won Florida in 2000 – BEELEEVE it! The final result — the absolute best you could say for Bush, even with all the revisionist shenanigans — was 48.8% for Bush to 48.8% for Gore.

This only shows how pervasive the whole red state/blue state stereotypes have become, and how, like most generalizations and simplifications, they are both wrong and self-perpetuating.

In 2004, even with the world’s worst Democratic candidate on the ticket (sorry Jon), for whom I myself could just barely stand to cast my vote, and could only do so by reminding myself repeatedly just how bad Bush was in comparison to Herman Munster-Kerry, a minimum of 47.1% of Floridians were able to force themselves to do the same, depending on whether you believe exit polls or Diebold machines.

Kerry lost Hispanic votes nationwide, and I think that had less to do with Bush’s appeal than with Kerry’s awkward, New England Yankee elitism. It’s the same reason all those people said they would rather quaff a beer with Bush — Kerry just wasn’t one of us.

But the fictional Santos is, and despite slanted redistricting, real-life Republicans aren’t a slam dunk in the Sunshine State. And even though in the 2000 census only 2.3% of the total 16.8% of Floridian Latinos were Mexican-American, you can depend on Florida to line up behind a legitimate Latino/Hispano/Cubano/and even Mexicano candidate.

Santos would have won Florida. I hope in 2008 we have a real choice again, and I am proven right. And Diebold is out of the picture.

‘So Long, Suckers’ — DeLay Slams His Successors As He Exits the House

Jon Ponder

The Bug Man is a real class act:

The House leaders failed to get party conservatives and moderates to unite on a budget bill, so they threw up their hands and sent everyone home a day early for a two-week recess. Mr. DeLay, meanwhile, told The Washington Times that the new House leadership lacked vision and an agenda.

“Breaking up our leadership team has taken its toll,” Mr. DeLay said.

Here was the man who, having kept conservatives in power by his relentless insistence on party discipline, was now turning around on his way out the door and telling his former followers that they were falling down on the job.

“These guys went out on so many limbs for DeLay,” said the Congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein. “And now he saws it off just as they’re trying to get their act together.”