Author: skippybkroo

even if skippy’s blog was eligible to win an oscar for best snark, we very most probably would not show up to accept it in february.

not because we wouldn’t be happy and proud to receive it. but because, more likely than not, there will be no oscar telecast next year, due to the actors’ strike.

as many of you know, skippy is a proud member of the screen actors guild. and it is with a heavy heart that he informs us that that union is thisclose to going on strike.

what’s that you say? didn’t the actors already go on strike earlier this year? alas, no. that was the writers’ guild, tho members of the actors unions did proudly support that labor action.

however, now the sag contract is up, and negotiations w/the producers have broken down after many, many, many attempts on our side to come to a reasonable conclusion.

our last resort was the use of a federal mediator to oversee the negotiations.  that, alas, failed on the saturday before thanksgiving.  now, the next step, which is currently happening, is for the board of the union to send out a strike referendum ballot for the membership to vote on.  tho we are not actual prognosticators, we are guessing that the membership will approve a strike.

sag president alan rosenberg told the membership in a recent memo:

your leadership believes that we must be empowered with the real threat of a work stoppage in order to let management know that we are committed to protecting the future of all actors. we ask for your support, knowing that you have entrusted us to fight for your rights, and to protect your wages, working conditions and your health and pension benefits. we take your trust very, very seriously and will work towards reaching a fair agreement without a work stoppage.

management continues to apply its one-size-fits-all demands to sag actors. and we continue to stress that actors have unique, reasonable needs that are different, not better, but different, than writers, directors and crewmembers. so they are telling us to allow the unions who negotiated before sag to be our proxies. i wonder, would nbc ever let abc negotiate its license fees for them? of course not, but they think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask us to defer to the needs of other union workers and ignore what is critical to actors and their families.

it’s also curious that these global corporations are preaching to us about the bad economy. like it’s our fault. as middle-income actors we are the victims of corporate greed. we didn’t cause this turmoil.

the biggest contention in these current negotiations is the lack of residuals for new (read:  the internet) media.  it’s our learned opinion that within 5 years, the internet will be the delivery system of choice for both network television and new movies.  and since the majority of actors make the bulk of their livings from residuals, a lack of same will effectively wipe out the careers and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of middle-class americans.

sure, we can hear you saying, brad and angelina aren’t going to feel any pain if they don’t get their $567 residual every three months or so.  trust us, skippy is no brad pitt (tho mrs. skippy likes to think so).  like most of his peers, skippy is a middle class schlub who is lucky if he makes $30,000 in any given year from his chosen career.

management, in the form of the studios, would like to eliminate residuals altogether.  from the official screen actors guild website:

we need to show management that we are willing to fight to preserve our ability to earn a living as union performers; otherwise, management will take that away from us. nearly half of our earnings as union performers come from residuals, but management wants us to allow them to make programs for the internet and other new media non-union and with no residuals. this means that as audiences shift from watching us on their televisions to watching us on their computers and cell phones our ability to earn a living will go away and future generations of actors may never be able to earn a living through their craft. this change will happen faster than you think…

management claims this bad deal is necessary because they need to “experiment” with new media and they claim they will renegotiate these terms with us in the future. we have already agreed to most of management’s new media terms, however, and have proposed, in the areas where we still disagree, extremely flexible terms for new media based on our successful low budget theatrical contracts and our nearly 800 made-for-new media contracts with independent producers. our terms will allow management the latitude to experiment using union actors.

and how can we believe that management will ever improve these new media terms when they still won’t improve the home video residual formula after 22 years? right now all the actors on a given cast share 1% of the revenue generated through dvd sales because of a formula we agreed to in 1986 when management needed to “experiment” with home video. in this negotiation, we have asked only that management at least make pension and health contributions on dvd residuals, rather than making us pay them ourselves out of our paltry 1%. they have refused even that!

the basic cable residual formula was also negotiated early in the history of that medium to reflect the then “experimental” status of basic cable programming and pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. it is now over 20 years later, 27% of all television ad dollars are now spent on basic cable, and the basic cable formula still pays only a small fraction of network television residuals. management simply does not have a history of ever ending their “experiments” and paying us fairly.

the reality is that management is opportunistic and they believe they can force these concessions on us because they believe we are weak and divided. we need your vote to prove them wrong.

skippy is not happy with the idea of going on strike in these troubled economic times.  but the original contract first acquired by the founding members of the screen actors guild was back during the great depression, so we are heartened that others have faced worse problems and prevailed.

we would caution interested parties not to believe everything they read in the papers.  wsj proffers that getting a ‘yes’ on the strike referendum may not be so easy:

a big issue is whether sag leadership will be able to persuade enough of its members to vote for strike authorization. the union’s ranks have long been divided across geographical and political lines, and many sag members are launching quiet campaigns against issuing a strike authorization. now, some union members are expressing strong skepticism at moving toward a walkout amid a global economic slump.

a moderate group within the union called unite for strength sent out a letter to supporters tuesday stating concerns that the guild hadn’t taken every action possible with regard to the mediation process. elsewhere, an online petition against a strike has gathered more than 17,000 signatures in fewer than two weeks, though it isn’t clear how many of the signatures are from union members.

we haven’t seen this petition ourselves, but skippy assures us that he was at the general membership meeting last october when the board announced that it had gotten unequivocal, if unofficial, approval from the members of the various branch thru-out the country in the weeks previous to the recent events.  and, we assume the wall street journal has a vested interest in seeing management win.

in the coming days we will present more facts about what management wants the actors to give up, such as force majeur and the exact money amounts involved.

no christmas could go by without a trip down to the skippy vaults to dredge up this old chestnut: yes, viriginia, there is a war on christmas:

[ed. note: this is a reprint of the famous 1897 column from the national review online. we think it is as relevant to today’s issues as it was back then]

we take great pleasure in answering at once the communication below, expressing at the same time great gratification that its author is numbered among the friends of nro:

“i am 8 years old. some of my liberal friends say there is no war on christmas. they say it’s just another code-word-filled wedge distraction to keep us from discussing real issues like iraq, the deficit, the patriot act, katrina and the administrations abysmal record on human rights. papa says, ‘if you see it on the internets, it’s so.’ please tell me the truth, is there a war on christmas?”

virginia o’scamlon

virginia, your liberal friends are wrong. they have been affected by the secularism of a secular age. they do not believe except what michael moore tells them. they think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their godless minds.

yes, virginia, there is a war on christmas.

it exists as certainly as lesbian feminazi’s who want to abort all the babies in the world exist, it exists as certainly as communist jewish pinkos who want to force children to worship satan in the schools exist. alas! how dreary would the world be if there were no war on christmas! it would be as dreary as if there were no loofas or falafels. there would be no unquestioning faith in republicans, no pollack jokes, no unfettered greed to make tolerable this tenuous economy. the eternal light with which childishness fills the american dream would be extinguished.

not believe in the war on christmas! you might as well not believe in the war on terror. you might get your papa to hire men to watch all the malls during december to catch godless communists trying to force people to say “kwanzaa hannukah ramadan,” but even if you didn’t see anybody try to wrestle christ away from the true believers at the gap, what would that prove? nobody ever sees secular heathens actually try to drink the blood of christian children, but that is no sign there is no war on christmas. the most real things in the world are those that neither logical men nor rush limbaugh can see. did you ever see jesus ride a dinosaur? of course not, but that’s no proof that he didn’t. nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are available only to the truly faithful, who shall delight in watching their enemies be smitten down in flames when the lord takes his rightful place in the mall.

you tear apart a david brooks argument and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the most evil liberal, nor even the united strength of all the hateful secularists and the aclu and all godless jews who ever lived could ever tear apart. only undying allegiance to talk radio, complete loyalty to fox news and our beloved leader, george w. bush, can push aside that curtain and view the eternal joy of the beauty of the faithful, rejoicing by god’s side as the evil-doers burn in torment, including those who watch the daily show and listen to al franken.

is the war on christmas real? ah, virginia, in all this world there is nothing else more real.

no war on christmas? thank god it lives forever and ever, as long as filthy multi-culturalistic pedophiles want to keep christ out of the malls in december. a thousand years from now, virginia, nay, 6,000 years from now, because the earth itself is only 6,000 years old, the war on christmas will continue to make glad the heart of neocons all over.

patterico’s pontifications (who graciously links to us, as we are tangentially involved in this brewing journamalistic scandal) points out that joel stein, big-time latimes op-ed writer, was a little bit sticky-fingered when it came to premises for his column this last week:

here’s joel stein, november 2:

just how easy is it for coulter to offend someone? would any words from her mouth do the trick? to test this theory, i developed the ann coulter mad libs.<sup>TM</sup&gt

it’s a good thing he used that <sup>TM</sup&gt mark. he wouldn’t want anyone to steal his concept.

patterico goes on:

oh, look! here’s media bloodhound, october 18 (two weeks earlier):

in honor of ann coulter’s influence on american media and politics, the penguin group (usa), in a joint venture with ms. coulter’s random house publisher, the crown publishing group, is releasing a special edition of mad libs titled ann libs.

readers of skippy will remember our linkage to mediabloodhound’s original piece in mid-october, which we thought was pretty amusing (the piece, not the middle of october).

and apparently joel stein found it amusing, too. amusing enough to appropriate, and take complete credit for, as his own.

we suppose that this, in and of itself, is not enough to topple stein from his job, a la dommie darko at the washpost. but we would hope that it does at least give stein a black enough of an eye to have to apologize and admit in print that mediabloodhound was the one who “developed” ann coulter mad libs.

why not help out by emailing the latimes editors, their readers’ representative, and/or joel stein, and pointing out this obvious bit of literary thievery?

via c&l, ezra throws down to michelle:

“it’s militant leftist bloggers,” writes malkin, “who wouldn’t know a good-faith argument if it bit them in the lip.” let’s have a good faith argument. i will debate michelle malkin anytime, anywhere, in any forum (save hotair tv, which she controls), on the particulars of s-chip. we can set the debate at a think tank, on bloggingheads, over im. hell, we can set up the podiums in the shrubbery outside my house, since that seems to be the sort of venue she naturally seeks out. and then if malkin wants an argument, she can have one. we’ll talk s-chip and nothing but — nothing of the frosts, or congress, or her blog…

so c’mon michelle: let’s debate health care. prove to the world that you really want “a good-faith argument.” we can talk crowd-out, and cross-subsidization, and whether lower-middle class entrepreneurs are able to procure health care on the individual market. if this is a policy argument you care so deeply about as to travel to the frost family’s house to see if they really deserved s-chip benefits, surely you’ll want to set up a web cam and talk through the issue.

we’ve written michelle asking for her response. we’ll see if we get one.

meanwhile, the baltimore sun is one multi-millionaire media organ that doesn’t take too kindly to the hardly-ever-right wing tactics to intimidate the frosts:

but while the frosts were helping a bipartisan majority in congress sell a plan to expand the program, they were not prepared for comments such as this one, posted over the weekend on the conservative web site redstate:

“if federal funds were required [they] could die for all i care. let the parents get second jobs, let their state foot the bill or let them seek help from private charities. … i would hire a team of pis and find out exactly how much their parents made and where they spent every nickel. then i’d do everything possible to destroy their lives with that info.”

the onslaught began over the weekend, a week after 12-year-old graeme frost delivered the democrats’ weekly radio address with a plea to bush to sign the bill. a contributor to the conservative web site free republic noted graeme’s enrollment in the private park school and the sale of a smaller rowhouse on the frosts’ block for $485,000 this year and questioned whether the family should be taking advantage of the state program.

that post was picked up by the national review online and other web sites. by monday, rush limbaugh was discussing the family’s earnings and assets on the air, and the blogger michelle malkin was writing about her visit to halsey frost’s east baltimore warehouse and her drive past the family’s butchers hill rowhouse. liberal bloggers, meanwhile, were complaining that the frosts were being “swift-boated.”

the hardly-ever-right wing sites have mentioned that at first glance, the frosts look well-off. the problem is, the right doesn’t go beyond glancing:

[deputy secretary for health care financing john g.] folkemer said a family’s assets are not considered in determining eligibility. halsey frost purchased the family home for $55,000 in 1990, according to city records, and refinanced in 2005, he says, to make improvements to accommodate the return of Graeme and gemma from the hospital. the 1936 brick rowhouse, on a side street near Patterson Park, has an assessed value of $263,140.

halsey frost purchased a 1920 warehouse in east baltimore for $160,000 in 1999, according to city records. it is assessed at $160,500. frost says he is still paying off the mortgages on both properties.

the four frost children depend on financial aid to attend private school, the frosts say. in addition, they say, gemma receives money from the city for special education made necessary by her injuries.

halsey and bonnie frost say they still have no health insurance. bonnie frost said she priced coverage recently at $1,200 a month.

we’d love to see ezra and michelle debate. it would be more interesting than any other recent debates, that’s for sure.

addendum:  we like colin mcenroe’s phrase:

no child left unsmeared.

we are quite fed up with the left trying to propigate the meme that rush limbaugh is a comedian.

we know that it’s an earnest attempt to diffuse the idea that rush is a pundit…after all, if you call someone a comedian, who would take him seriously?

if we can divorce limbaugh from the label of pundit or analyst, the conventional wisdom seems to say, then he won’t have the power, or at least, the punch that his influence seems to indicate. so, call him a comedian, and insult him and dilute him at the same time.

that’s all well and good. unless you’re a comedian!
skippy is, among other things (husband, patriot, actor, citizen, licensed quantuum mechanic, home owner, writer of wrongs, para-paralegal, proud holder of a poetic license, beloved children’s icon), a comedian. and believe us when we tell you, not many comedians think limbaugh is funny.

dennis miller is funny. even ann coulter can write jokes (come on, that bit about having to go to rehab if she used the f-word for edwards was funny). but limbaugh is no comedian.

a true comedian says things that are funny irrespective of the political premise. in other words, a joke has to be funny even if you don’t agree with the politics of the joke teller, for the joke teller to be called a “comedian.”

we didn’t like bob hope’s conservative agenda. but we loved bob hope’s delivery. but we wanna tell ya…

we have not heard anything limbaugh said that comes close to being funny, unless you subscribe to the moronic self-involved view of political thought (all for me, and if you disagree, you are evil). he is not a comedian.

therefore, we are proposing a new label for rush, which we hope will become the meme of the day:

limbaugh’s not a comedian, he’s a story-teller. he tells tall tales. he makes stuff up.

this way he’s not even given the credit for the wit and intelligence it takes to make a good joke. and, he’s labeled as someone who fabricates constantly.

he’s a story-teller. he makes shit up. period.

this categorization (and marginalization) of limbaugh will not only dilute his standing, it will pay tribute to real comedians, like jon stewart, steve colbert, mort sahl, margaret cho, ellen degeneres, bill maher and skippy.

of course, it may not sit well with garrison keillor. but we can live with that.

addendum: speaking of comedians, conservatives, and the multi-millionaire media, we can’t tell if whoopi goldberg was being purposely ironic or just serendipitously clueless when she,a black woman, said to larry king on his show “i have a lot of friends who are conservatives.”

ah, but, whoopi, would you want your sister to marry one?

Promoted by Steven D. We believe in free speech rights for all species, even kangeroos.

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

star simpson, who sounds like the cartoon character host of the view, was the mit student who was arrested at logan airport last week for wearing a “hoax device,” which airport police thought was a bomb, but was really just geek computer art.

mit waffled its way into a non-committal condemnation of star’s choice of wardrobe. the school’s official reaction on the day of her arrest, en toto:

mit is cooperating fully with the state police in the investigation of an incident at logal airport this morning involving star simpson, a sophomore at mit. as reported to us by authorities, ms. simipson’s actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport.

star’s fellow students rallied behind her, condemning the university’s condemnation of her, beginning with a demonstration on campus earlier this week:

approximately 30 students gathered yesterday afternoon to protest the administration’s handling of controversies involving students. while the majority of the protest was focused on the star a. simpson ’10 arrest, the discussion also touched on administrative reactions to the sodium fire on the charles river and the felony charges filed against hackers found in the mit faculty club.

the protest, which took place outside of pritchett dining in walker memorial, consisted of students carrying signs such as “question the media,” “wait for the facts,” and “support your student.” students also carried a protest letter that had been circulated across the campus.

the letter urges mit susan president hockfield to back simpson 100%, as opposed to its official statement:

despite the fact that many of the news reports are calling the circuit board an intentional “hoax device,” it is clear to me that star’s intentions were entirely benign. star’s own statement that the device was an artistic name tag for career fair and her complete cooperation with the authorities indicate that she had no intent of causing any trouble – she was simply going to the airport to meet her boyfriend.

…the mit news office’s press release which stated “ms. simpson’s actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport” is entirely misguided in its approach. regardless of whether her actions were reasonable, naive, or even “reckless,” as the news office put it, mit has an obligation to its students – an obligation to give its students a high quality education, which includes helping students handle matters that might interfere with receiving such an education…particularly when all the facts were not in, it would have been prudent to gather information about the situation and talk directly to star before issuing an unsupportive statement.

the notion that a small exposed circuit board and a handful of play-dou warrants deadly force is foolish given the thousands of large computer circuits which pass through airport security every day. surely, mit cannot be condoning the use of deadly force against an mit student whose behavior may have been a bit eccentric but had no characteristics that were aggressive or dangerous.

the tech – mit’s oldest student paper – also calls for the school to stand behind star:

simpson faces a five-year prison sentence if prosecutors prove that simpson’s sweatshirt made people reasonably believe it was a bomb, and if they also prove that she wore it in order to scare people. assistant district attorney wayne margolis should realize that the latter half of this charge – intent – is clearly missing and should drop the case.

whether or not the suffolk county district attorney’s office chooses to continue its case against simpson, the institute should support her. mit administrators are in a unique position of authority to tell the police and district attorney, the press, and the general public that the device posed no possible danger, and that, for people here, carrying breadboards, leds, wire, and batteries is hardly unusual. by remaining silent and unsupportive, mit risks losing the good will (and the dollars) of its technically inclined alumni and future alumni. worse, if mit gains a reputation for prioritizing its image over its students’ well-being, talented prospective students will be turned off by the institute.

brandon keim of wired science (no, that’s not a movie starring kelly brock and michael anthony hall) takes a similar position:

are you fucking kidding me?

what happened is so grossly wrong on so many levels that i hardly know where to begin. since when did a circuit board on a sweatshirt look like a bomb? since when did suicide bombers walk around with bombs on the outside of their clothing? if the people in charge of protecting us are stupid enough to think this, how hard would it be for real bombers to fool them? more importantly, since when was it okay to blow away someone who posed such an ambiguous threat? and if she really did have an easily-detonated bomb, wouldn’t shooting her — rather than, say, paralyzing her — pretty much guarantee its explosion?

one could argue that she should have known better. fine, she should have — boston’s already infamous for being stupidly, senselessly scared. but that’s not the point. in a world full of science and technology, many more people will merit the same suspicion as her: people who use wearable electronics, researchers who let a test tube fall into their flight bag … the possibilities are endless, and probably not something that anyone would think of until they’d been hauled off for interrogation or surrounded by trigger-happy cops.

(hell, just the other day i nearly carried a green goo-encrusted test tube through terminal security; it originally contained a novelty drink handed out at a biotechnology conference. and just ask steve kurtz about this sort of thing.)

what is wrong with us? what happened to common sense? will scientists and technologists soon live in fear of someone point a finger at them in a public place?

[ed. note: 10 zen monkeys tells us the story of the bioterrorism charges brought by the justice dept. against the above-mentioned mr. kurtz, after paramedics, arriving at his house to tend to mrs. kurtz’s heart attack, found petrie dishes and scientific thingies that scared them so much that they called the police. also, mrs. kurtz died.]

so, because most people in charge nowadays are luddites when it comes to science and technology, suddenly the rest of us have to keep our heads down and minds firmly ensconsed in the 19th century as well? (make that the 16th century…there were actual machines at work in the victorian age, and who knows how many stereo-optic latern shows could be used to blow up america? the dept. of homeland security doesn’t want to take that risk.)

unfortunately for the intelligent among us, there are plenty of people who are ready to side with those who would keep us stupid and in fear. charles memminger of the star (no relation) bulletin of hawaii (where simpson was raised) writes:

showing an exquisite lack of sensitivity for the victims of suicide bombers, not to mention an exquisite lack of concern for her own personal safety, star simpson (no relation to o.j.) apparently considered her bomb sweatshirt a piece of art. (her mother says star might have accidentally worn the sweatshirt to the airport. presumably star’s “faux jar of anthrax” sweatshirt was in the cleaners.)

tho we admit to enjoying the “faux jar of anthrax sweatshirt” joke, we are appalled that mr. menninger would ascribe context of “fake bomb” to the computer circuit board jewelry that star wore, where there obviously was none.

if star were one of the code pinks or billionaires against bush or other street theater demonstrators who purposely wore a fake bomb to an airport to make a political statement, we would be less sympathetic. there is, after, common sense that needs to be attached to all communication, even political protest.

but star wasn’t making a statement, at least, not to paranoid right-wing america. she was simply wearing her goofy geeky computer art. goodness, if personal fashion is now a reason to get arrested, we can think of a thousand more deserving subjects than an mit geek.

are we all supposed to go back to papayus and stylus just because those in authority can’t tell what a bomb looks like? apparently so, according to the monday morning generals in the war on terra.

the students get it. the scientists get it. the luddites don’t.

too bad for us the luddites are in charge.

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

via jon swift guesting at c&l, we find pam’s house blend having a quite astute realization that none, that would be zero, zip, zilch, nada, goose egg, null set, absence of anything, of the big box blogs have had anything to say about the jena 6:

chris kromm of the institute for southern studies and its blog facing south, is appalled, rightfully so, at the sparse coverage of the historic march for justice in jena, lousiana.

it’s not to say that it isn’t being covered in the blogosphere at all — black bloggers have largely been responsible for the high profile of this case, picking up the ball where the melanin-challenged blogs of influence have dropped it. you’d think that the events today, which are being covered by the msm, would mean that the story is now mainstream blogworthy, but you would be wrong. chris:

dailykos features a handful of posts about injustice in iraq today — but not a single entry on its main page, or even its user-generated “diaries,” about this important case.

talkingpointsmemo, a favorite of the dc wonk set, is similarly incensed about foreign policy, but apparently not about racial justice in the south — nothing there either.

long-time progressive blogger atrios doesn’t have a lot of posts up,but found time to touch on paul krugman, iraq and the state of the euro — but not this major issue.

surely talkleft — which has positioned itself as the leading progressive blog about criminal justice issues — would have something? think again — not a single mention, not even in the quick news briefs!

what about another progressive favorite, firedoglake? a rant about republicans being “little bitches,” but nothing on the jena 6.

when the jena 6 does make an appearance on progressive blogs today, it’s little more than a passing nod. huffington post has a blog post buried below the fold; thinkprogress gives it a two-sentence news brief.

[ed. note: the today pam refers to is last thursday, the day of the huge march and demonstration in jena]

however, many of these blogs are eagerly pointing to news stories which suggest the republican candidates don’t care about black issues.

[btw, nothing’s up at americablog either, to be fair. my guest blogging stint is by and large up.] what is the explanation? oh, i could think of several, but overt racism isn’t one of them. i have a couple of theories.

her theories are not kind (not that they should be), but worthy of thought. we suggest you go read her rant en toto (and dorothy, too), and the comments left thereon.

we admit we were late to the party ourselves, at first employing the instapundit excuse (duh! too complicated fer our little brains! hyuk! hyuk!), but then we found (via susie madrak) the great background piece by gil kaufman on mtv news, which was succinct, thorough, well-laid out, and easy to follow.

(commenters on pam’s blog also point out msnbc’s piece, also quite comprehensive.)

now, it is, to be fair, 4 days after the massive march, but some of those big box blogs have jumped on the bandwagon:

talkleft has three posts, including one “jena six thread”;

c&l, our fav bbb, has seven posts, three of which are blog round-up compilations, all guested by non-staff members [ed. note: it turns out blue gal has been promoted to front page status at c&l, making our assertion of “guested by non-staff members” wrong, and our congratulations to her overdue];

tpm has one, count ’em, one story, about how fred thompson is out of the loop on the jena six (hello, pot? this is kettle…)

tpm cafe has one;

dkos (aside from the facing south cross-post pam alluded to) has three front page stories which include the words “jena six,” two of which are open threads (but several, upwards to 50, diaries by members, including some asking why blogtopia* is so lax about this story);

fdl has one story, but at least it is from the ground at jena, and pam reports that jane told her there were technical difficulties getting the report from the blogger in jena;

huffpo cross-posted susie’s piece, and had another post;

way down at the bottom of the list, americablog has zero, still; and, to a lesser extent, duncan.

go back to the comments section on pam’s house blend and there you will find plenty of smaller blogs plugging their own efforts. it does seem to us that here the smaller entities in blogtopia* have picked up the ball dropped by the bbb.

another reason to keep clicking those links to the esoteric blogs you’ve never heard of before.

now, we’re not about to accuse anybody in blogtopia* of unconscious bigotry. that would be easy. and we hate unconscious bigots. we’ll never rent to them, or let them into our schools.

but it seems to us, that if we are to call ourselves progressives, it behooves us all to make the extra effort to be inclusive. and for god’s sake, how hard can that be in this case? all you have to do is do some reading, and make a frickin’ link, and voila! your readers become a little more aware of a tragic situation that the mmm is refusing to delve deeply into.

*and yes, we coined that phrase!

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

boston is apparently still a little skittish 6 years after the fact. an mit student wearing home-made computer jewelry on the outside of her jacket was arrested at logan airport today. asspress:

an mit student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest was arrested at gunpoint friday at logan international airport, officials said.

except that it wasn’t “strapped to her chest,” but pinned to her coat.

photo ap/lisa poole

star simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be play-doh in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said state police maj. scott pare, the commanding officer at the airport.

except that other reports have the play-doh in simpson’s hands, not on the circuit board.

pare said authorities had not determined a motive. simpson was charged with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device, and was to be arraigned in east boston district court later in the day.

gee, could the motive be, “wearing neat art that stodgy old people don’t understand”?

“she’s extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used,” pare told the associated press. “and she’s lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.”

this we have to agree with. tho it’s obvious to anybody with a healthy sexual identity (that leaves most repubbbs out) that the young woman was only wearing geek jewelry, we do question her common sense.

even before 9/11 skippy, a stand-up comic by profession, refrained from doing hi-jacking jokes while going thru airline security (he wouldn’t even say hello to anybody named jack). tho it’s obviously the same out-of-touch paranoia that allowed cartoon characters to bring bean town to a halt last year, one would do well not to tempt or provoke that simmering outrage.

what we are amazed at is the cornucopia of headlines labeling the geek computer art as a “fake bomb.” that pre-supposes motivation in simpson’s mind, and the commanding officer of logan security said himself that we don’t know her motivation.

of course, this would have taken an open mind and sophistication of generational fashion beyond anything any repubbb could achieve, but we like c-net’s approach – it was computer fashion:

simpson was wearing a black sweatshirt that had a circuit board with wires, green led lights and a 9-volt battery attached to it. when an airport employee asked about her shirt, simpson walked away without answering so the employee called the authorities, the boston globe has reported.

[ed. note: therein lies simpson’s mistake]

the back of simpson’s sweatshirt said “socket to me…course vi,” a reference to mit’s electrical engineering and computer science program.simpson is a second-year student in the electrical engineering and computer science department of mit’s school of engineering, according to the mit web site.

salon’s machinist blog (from whence we got the pic) has this to say:

this is my speculation only, but it seems quite possible that rather than intending to deliberately walk into logan with a fake bomb, simpson might instead have rolled out of bed with an art jacket she often wore around campus and slipped it on in a rush on her way to pick up a friend — forgetting that she was heading into the all-fear-all-the-time black hole that is u.s. aviation.

what’s the evidence for this? for one thing, as xeni jardin points out in boing boing’s marvelous roundup on the story, simpson is much into making cool, out-there techie stuff, things like a jacket that lights up. her own web site is currently offline — click here later — but you can check out some of simpson’s handiwork at her instructables profile and look here for one of her recent school projects.

simpson describes herself this way on the web:

in a sentence, i’m an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, i love to build things and i love crazy ideas.

in a paragraph; i’m currently studying computers and how they work at mit. i play at a student-run machine shop called miters. before that, i lived for a long time in hawaii, while traveling the world and saving the planet from evil villains with my delivered-just-in-time gadgets.

a woman from instructables.com who knows simpson tells boing boing that simpson’s friends at mit “say she wears the hoodie on a regular basis — it’s just unfortunate that she had it on while trying to pick a friend up at the airport. mit students don’t really do mornings, or worry about what they’re wearing, so i can’t imagine she’d even think about her clothes before heading out to pick up a friend at the airport before 8 a.m.”

we don’t do mornings either, and we also wander around in a daze, caring less what we look like until about 5 pm, when we actually become aware of our surroundings and look in the mirror.

if she did it to provoke a response (and that doesn’t seem to be the case), she certainly got one, and we can’t really condone her actions. however, if she was just wearing some weird crap that computer geeks wear, then we say, call the aqua teen hunger force as character witnesses for her trial.

star simpson, 19, had a computer circuit board, wiring and a putty that later turned out to be play-doh in plain view over a black hooded sweat shirt she was wearing, said state police maj. scott pare, the commanding officer at the airport.

except that other reports have the play-doh in simpson’s hands, not on the circuit board.

pare said authorities had not determined a motive. simpson was charged with disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device, and was to be arraigned in east boston district court later in the day.

gee, could the motive be, “wearing neat art that stodgy old people don’t understand”?

“she’s extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used,” pare told the associated press. “and she’s lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue.”

this we have to agree with. tho it’s obvious to anybody with a healthy sexual identity (that leaves most repubbbs out) that the young woman was only wearing geek jewelry, we do question her common sense.

even before 9/11 skippy, a stand-up comic by profession, refrained from doing hi-jacking jokes while going thru airline security (he wouldn’t even say hello to anybody named jack). tho it’s obviously the same out-of-touch paranoia that allowed cartoon characters to bring bean town to a halt earlier this year, one would do well not to tempt or provoke that simmering outrage.

what we are amazed at is the cornucopia of headlines labeling the geek computer art as a “fake bomb.” that pre-supposes motivation in simpson’s mind, and the commanding officer of logan security said himself that we don’t know her motivation.

of course, this would have taken an open mind and sophistication of generational fashion beyond anything any repubbb could achieve, but we like c-net’s approach – it was computer fashion:

simpson was wearing a black sweatshirt that had a circuit board with wires, green led lights and a 9-volt battery attached to it. when an airport employee asked about her shirt, simpson walked away without answering so the employee called the authorities, the boston globe has reported.

[ed. note: therein lies simpson’s mistake]

the back of simpson’s sweatshirt said “socket to me…course vi,” a reference to mit’s electrical engineering and computer science program.simpson is a second-year student in the electrical engineering and computer science department of mit’s school of engineering, according to the mit web site.

salon’s machinist blog (from whence we got the pic) has this to say:

this is my speculation only, but it seems quite possible that rather than intending to deliberately walk into logan with a fake bomb, simpson might instead have rolled out of bed with an art jacket she often wore around campus and slipped it on in a rush on her way to pick up a friend — forgetting that she was heading into the all-fear-all-the-time black hole that is u.s. aviation.

what’s the evidence for this? for one thing, as xeni jardin points out in boing boing’s marvelous roundup on the story, simpson is much into making cool, out-there techie stuff, things like a jacket that lights up. her own web site is currently offline — click here later — but you can check out some of simpson’s handiwork at her instructables profile and look here for one of her recent school projects.

simpson describes herself this way on the web:

in a sentence, i’m an inventor, artist, engineer, and student, i love to build things and i love crazy ideas.

in a paragraph; i’m currently studying computers and how they work at mit. i play at a student-run machine shop called miters. before that, i lived for a long time in hawaii, while traveling the world and saving the planet from evil villains with my delivered-just-in-time gadgets.

a woman from instructables.com who knows simpson tells boing boing that simpson’s friends at mit “say she wears the hoodie on a regular basis — it’s just unfortunate that she had it on while trying to pick a friend up at the airport. mit students don’t really do mornings, or worry about what they’re wearing, so i can’t imagine she’d even think about her clothes before heading out to pick up a friend at the airport before 8 a.m.”

we don’t do mornings either, and we also wander around in a daze, caring less what we look like until about 5 pm, when we actually become aware of our surroundings and look in the mirror.

if she did it to provoke a response (and that doesn’t seem to be the case), she certainly got one, and we can’t really condone her actions. however, if she was just wearing some weird crap that computer geeks wear, then we say, call the aqua teen hunger force as character witnesses for her trial.

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

more from michael bersin and skippy cartoonist brett penrose on the tom harkin steak fry last weekend (previous installments about this adventure can be found here and here)…

to start, michael talks about the speechifyin over at show me progress:

as the speechifying started i realized i wasn’t going to be able to talk to people in the crowd. they were paying attention to whoever was speaking on the stage. i later made the mistake of trying to talk to some edwards supporters after he had finished speaking. a woman dismissed me with [rightly so], “i’m trying to listen to this speaker…”

the candiates spoke in an order determined at random. first up was barack obama:

…some of the reason you’re all out here. you’re sick and tired of george bush…

barack obama supporters started trickling to the exits after he spoke.

bill richardson:

…al gore has been right, we all just hope he doesn’t get in the race…

…with bill richardson you get change and experience…

hillary clinton was introduced and a good portion of the crowd got on its feet:

…building a new field of dreams for the country we love, and we’re going to take it back…

if you’re ready for change, i’m ready to lead…

…[referring to the bush administration] the era of cowboy diplomacy is over…

…[referring to cabinet appointments] let’s appoint qualified people to do the job in america again…

…[a 90 year old woman] said, ‘i was born before a woman could vote and now i’m going to see a woman in the white house’…

a number of hillary clinton supporters exited the grounds after she spoke.

chris dodd:

…doing something greater than ourselves…

…all 12,000 of you are invited to spend inaugural night at the white house [harkin supposedly quipped, “we’ll all be there.”]

john edwards:

…when we walk away from the poor and defeseless our party loses its identity…

…we need more than the rhetoric of change…

…[the system] is broken. it does not work for ordinary americans. when you give [corporate interests] a seat at the table, they’ll eat all the food…

…i don’t want to see us replace corporate republicans with corporate democrats…

…george bush has not damaged america’s standing in the world, he’s destroyed it…

every [war] funding bill sent to bush should have a timetable for withdrawal…

most of the crowd started to stream out.

there’s plenty more (including snippets from joe biden) over at show me progress, so pls. go read michael’s post.

and our intrepid cartoonist, brett penrose, had this to say about the whole experience:

i was nearly crushed between hillary and edwards supporters– i forgot how much enthusiasm college-age people have.  needless to say, i did not take my sketch pad into the crowd (as i may have ended up wearing it!).  at one point, as the crowd rushed forward to get a better view of hillary, the plastic construction fence snapped and i thought for a second the secret service was going to pounce!

i had no problem seeing bersin because he’s so tall.  i always knew where the candidate was based on the location of the boom mikes and by the location of our mike.  i have to say, bersin looked like a real journalist out there and his posts showed it. i think he missed his calling.  

on my way back to my seat, i almost ran into the c-span reporter guy but there is no stopping a man who just survived the college stampede and who needs a beer.  shortly after i was seated back at “camp warrensburg,” bill richardson stood to my left and i didn’t even notice until he was walking away.  my wife was trying to get my attention but i was staring off into the iowa sky (or something).  

in short, the food was good, the beer was cold, the weather was great, my travelling company was awesome and it was great to be surrounded by 12,000 screaming democrats all fired up for 2008!  as the county we reside in is republican infested, it was refreshing to spend a sunday with progressive-minded people hungry to move this country forward!

and, here’s brett’s interpretation of the whole ordeal:

good job, boys!  thanks for covering this important event!

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

mediabloodhound is following the story of how abc news is continuously giving the shaft to dennis “the menace” kucinich, and how other media outlets are enabling them to do so:

following last sunday’s democratic presidential debate on abc news’ this week with george stephanopoulos, dennis kucinich’s campaign asked abc news to address issues it had with treatment rep. kucinich (d-ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in abc’s online coverage. in an email sent out to supporters on wednesday, the campaign said it “submitted objections and inquiries to abc news representatives on monday and tuesday. abc news representatives have failed to respond – or even acknowledge – those objections and inquiries.” i confirmed with the kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response abc news executive director andrea jones sent to the washington post and time magazine.

abc news representatives felt it necessary to answer the kucinich campaign’s objections when time magazine’s national political correspondent karen tumulty queried them. writing on the time blog swampland, tumulty initially says of the kucinich team’s issues with abc’s treatment (which included kucinich not having a chance to speak until 28 minutes into the debate), “these all seemed like fair complaints to me, so i asked abc news to respond.” then tumulty says, “in an e-mail, executive director andrea jones answered him [kucinich] point by point.”

while i give tumulty credit for contacting abc news, her investigative journalism unfortunately ends there. once she receives the email from jones, tumulty slips into stenography mode. jones’ “point by point” response to the kucinich campaign’s complaints does not in itself exculpate or dispel any of abc’s wrongdoing. tumulty fails to assess the accuracy and logic of jones’ answers.

first, just so we’re all up to speed, here are the issues (an aggregate of the thousands of complaints received during and after abc’s debate coverage) that the kucinich campaign asked abc news to address:

• congressman kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a “politics page” photo of the candidates.
• sometime monday afternoon, after congressman kucinich took a commanding lead in abc’s own on-line “who won the democratic debate” survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.
• abc news has not officially reported the results of its online survey.
• after the results of that survey showed congressman kucinich winning handily, abc news, sometime monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking “who is winning the democratic debate?”
• during the early voting monday afternoon and evening, u.s. senator barack obama was in the lead. by sometime late monday or early tuesday morning, congressman kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.
• sometime tuesday morning, abc news apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.
• and, as every viewer of the nationally televised sunday presidential forum is aware, congressman kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator george stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.

now back to tumulty commenting on jones’ response [emphasis below is mine]:

this gist of her answer is this: she denies that kucinich was cropped out of any photo, noting that “there are 20 photos live on the abc news website, mr. kucinich is in a number of them and there is even one of him and his wife. he is one of 6 candidates who got his own photo in the slide show. as for the images, clearly nothing was cropped, the image in question was shot by charlie neibergall of the ap not abc.”

false. had tumulty – time magazine’s national political correspondent and former member of the white house press corps – simply located the original ap photo (which, at most, should’ve taken a few minutes online), she would’ve found kucinich in it and realized the following version abc news prominently displayed online after the debate had, indeed, been cropped:

you’ll have to go to mediabloodhound to see the image, we don’t want to steal their bandwidth.

but we also recommend you read the entire article; mediabloodhound has done a yeoman’s job of detailing the many ways that abc is shafting kucinich, and time and washpost are simply acting as yes-men for the network when asked to investigate this issue (such as how the washpost characterized kucinich as “irate,” when congressman was no such thing, but merely asking for an accounting of his obviously short-shrifted treatment by the network. washpost didn’t even bother to contact kucinich or anyone on his campaign before writing the story).

action alert addendum: why not write to these multi-millionaire media outlets and let them know how disengenuous their coverage of rep. kucinich is?

here’s the contact page for this week w/george snuffleupagus. here’s an email for blogs at the washpost. here’s the time swampland post. here’s the sleuth (mary ann akers) at the washpost (her original post about kucinich has closed comments).