Category: media

The stupidest thing the Wisconsin GOP has ever done

July 6, 2015

media, Wisconsin politics
This past weekend — Independence Day weekend, ironically — I got a lesson that however cynical I am about politics and politicians, including those I vote for, I’m not cynical enough.

Tucked into the current version of the 2015–17 state budget passed by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee was a provision that would have gutted the state’s Open Records Law for the benefit of legislators.

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association describes the provision thusly:

“The Legislature is attempting to change for its purposes the very definition of “public record,’” said Wisconsin Newspaper Association Executive Director Beth Bennett. “The ‘legal privilege’ these lawmakers seek is tantamount to a blank check to close the government to scrutiny from citizens and the press.” Read the full WNA press release here.

Attorney General Brad Schimel calls the move “a step in the wrong direction.”

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council calls the move “an assault on Wisconsin’s long and proud tradition of open government.“

That news broke late last week. The Wisconsin State Journal reported this Independence Day night:

In the face of withering criticism, Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican leaders of the Legislature announced Saturday that a provision added to the state budget to gut the open records law “will be removed from the budget in its entirety.”

Walker made the announcement Saturday afternoon in a joint statement with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R–Juneau, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R–Rochester, and Joint Finance Committee co-Chairs, Sen. Alberta Darling, R–River Hills, and Rep. John Nygren, R–Marinette.

“We are steadfastly committed to open and accountable government,” the statement said. “The intended policy goal of these changes was to provide a reasonable solution to protect constituents’ privacy and to encourage a deliberative process between elected officials and their staff in developing policy. It was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.”

The statement said the Legislature will form a Legislative Council committee to study the matter outside of the budget process.

No one claimed responsibility for requesting the language be added to a sweeping omnibus amendment the Legislature’s budget committee passed late Thursday. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Walker played in the drama over the past few days.

But amid near-universal condemnation of the move and bipartisan demands that the language be withdrawn or that Walker use his partial veto power to strip it out of the budget if it passed, the governor and the leadership conceded defeat on the issue.

Republican leaders have refused to say who initially sought the changes or why.

Among other things, the revisions would have rendered secret virtually all records and communications by lawmakers and policymakers at the state and local levels.

Drafting files for legislation would have no longer been public, and legislators would have been granted a “legal privilege” or right to refuse to disclose any communication that occurred during the lawmaker’s term in office.

The measure, which Darling and Nygren allowed to be added to the omnibus motion, stunned advocates of open government and prompted many lawmakers, including some Republicans, to pledge not to vote for a budget that contained the items.

It is, first, unbelievable that Walker, who supposedly is running or president, allowed this to get as far as it did. Reporters who cover the White House have called it the most secretive and least media-helpful White House of all time. Hillary Clinton will never win anyone’s Freedom of Information award (one word: “Benghazi”). And yet the state GOP apparently was fine with being on the state level what the White House is on the federal level in terms of working away from public view and scrutiny.

There are at least three ironies about this. I believe this was prompted by the experience of state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D–Middleton), who was communicating via state email with state employees about the Act 10 public employee collective bargaining reforms. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sued Erpenbach to see the emails after he refused to release them, in violation of the state Open Records Law. Erpenbach lost. He deserved to lose.

It is also ironic that one apparent supporter of this hideous legislation, Fitzgerald, is the former owner of the Dodge County Independent News. One wonders what newspaper publisher Fitzgerald would have thought of politician Fitzgerald.

Then again, this flies in the face of what gubernatorial candidate Walker said to The Lakeland Times in Minocqua in 2010:

When he says he believes in government transparency, it’s not just a campaign slogan, Walker said.

“I don’t just say that, I’ve lived it,” he said. “(In Milwaukee County), we have put all government purchases online at no additional cost. Every purchase, everything we enter into our accounting software, automatically in real time goes on to a website that tells the public every purchase by department. Not only a journalist but a citizen journalist or anybody else can track it down.”

Walker said he does not favor proposed constraints on access to police 911 tapes or to the state’s online circuit court records, and he says he also believes the Legislature itself needs to be more transparent.

“In fact I’ve even proposed – in terms of the budget process, but it would apply to anything – other things that would help transparency,” he said. “I don’t think there should be any votes in closed caucus, on any issue. If a county board or school board can’t discuss a budget in private, then the state Legislature certainly should not. There should not be any closed caucuses on the budget.”

What’s more, he said, the budget should only entail budgetary items; there shouldn’t be any nonfiscal items in it.

“And I would make it, by statute, that the Legislature can’t vote on anything after 10 at night or before 9 in the morning,” Walker said. “They did things this last (budget) at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning. As I tell my staff, nothing good happens after midnight. But they did it on purpose because not only do they not want average persons to know, they don’t want reporters with deadlines to know – after 10 you miss the nightly TV news and you’re not in print for the daily newspapers. They push it back on a Saturday, hoping people won’t read about things like that.”

This appears to have been prompted by the unidentified author’s, or authors’, desire to keep away from public view the various pre-introduction versions of legislation, including legislation written in some form by such groups as the American Legislative Exchange Council. Democrats and their apparatchiks have been complaining about ALEC’s supposed influence in legislation, as if only ideas created in Wisconsin have any merit. (The groups complaining the loudest, including Zero Wisconsin Now, are groups who have spent the 2010s losing elections and legislative votes.)

Well, so what? Being in power means you have to withstand the scrutiny of the opposition, whether you like it or not, whether the opposition has any valid points or not, and whether the opposition is fair or not. That also applies to dealing with the news media. It demonstrates a lack of intellectual courage to not be able to argue legislation on its merits when someone complains about the source of said legislation, as if, for instance, fiscal responsibility is a concept that should be foreign to Wisconsin. (The apparent idea of changing the wording of the Wisconsin Idea could have, for instance, been justified as (1) the need to make the UW System adhere to the educational, economic and vocational realities of the 21st century, or (2) with easy-to-obtain examples of how UW System professors teach only from the left-side pages of the textbook, making the term “sifting and winnowing” less correct than one assumes its author had in mind.)

Democrats are having a field day with this, which is unsurprising, yet hypocritical. They can vote against it now and take full advantage of it should it become law. The beneficiary of this is not specifically Republicans; it’s incumbents, who would be able to do their work away from the eyes of, among others, potential future challengers. (Which is why I now believe the state Open Meetings and Open Records laws need to be in the state Constitution, to make it nearly impossible to eviscerate the concept of open government.)

I am sure some readers of this blog hate the news media and could not care less if the Legislature makes it more difficult for the media to do their jobs. There are those in the Republican Party who think the media has it in for them and therefore are perfectly willing to stick it to the likes of Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chris Rickert of the Wisconsin State Journal, every person getting a paycheck from The Capital Times, radio’s Sly, Wisconsin Public Radio, and so on. It could even be argued that the media has brought this on itself by being insufficiently critical toward Democrats, and being knee-jerk critical of Republicans, particularly on the opinion page, and well before Walker’s election in 2010.

Here is why those of you who see your views in the previous paragraph are mistaken. In the same way that the First Amendment applies to all Americans, not just the news media, the state Open Records and Open Meetings laws apply to all Wisconsinites, not just those who oppose what’s going on in a particular political body, and not just the news media. It is also rather arrogant to assume that the GOP will remain in control in Madison for perpetuity, or until you are past caring. Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if legislative Democrats had tried this the last time they controlled all of state government, in 2009 and 2010, and rightly so.

Remember Recallarama? The reason why Wisconsinites know who signed the recall forms, and now are able to question whether state and local government employees or news media who wanted Walker and other Republicans recalled are able to perform their jobs impartially is because of an Open Records Law request. The same Open Records Law allows Wisconsinites to find out how much every single employee of government is paid with their tax dollars. That is why such non-Democrats as Right Wisconsin and Jerry Bader and numerous conservative groups were appropriately swift to condemn the JFC vote and to urge Walker to veto it from the budget. That is also why there was no one I saw, in the Legislature, media or anywhere else, willing to defend this disaster.

Independent of whether policy items belong in the budget at all (they don’t, but both parties add them to state budgets with voter impunity), this proposal should not be in the budget, or anywhere else. Walker and Republican leaders had better be telling the truth that changes to the Open Records Law are dead. The people paying for government have an absolute right to know what government, including government employees and politicians, are doing with their tax dollars.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
1 comment on The stupidest thing the Wisconsin GOP has ever done
Why your children should read crime fiction

July 3, 2015

Culture, media
Stefan Beck:

A character in Elmore Leonard’s 1976 novel Swag devises and swears by “ten rules for success and happiness.” He carries them on his person, scrawled “in blue ink on ten different cocktail napkins from the Club Bouzouki, the Lafayette Bar, Edjo’s, and a place called The Lindell AC.” This budding Dale Carnegie is keen on success and happiness in a very specific context: armed robbery. Is his system foolproof? We wouldn’t have much of a story if it were. We sure as hell wouldn’t have a Leonard novel, with poor choices and their nasty results piling up faster than a Detroit snowfall.

Twenty-five years after Swag’s publication, and perhaps in homage to that book, Leonard offered 10 rules of his own—for writing, that is, not knocking over liquor stores—to the New York Times. Most were standard fare about avoiding adverbs and exclamation points, but the final rule is interesting: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Makes sense, but it also raises the question: Who skips ahead? Most grown-up readers either slog through a book’s slower sections, like the sewer history in Les Misérables, or take their impatience or boredom as a cue to read something else.

Who skips ahead? Kids do.

They do this, I suspect, in two situations. One is when they are tasked with reading a grown-up book that they find utterly unendurable. I recall the anguish with which my high school self read Ethan Frome before having the bright idea that I could still pass the quiz if I just read every third page. (It didn’t work.) The other situation is when kids are reading for plot in a book whose language is not captivating enough to keep their eyes from dancing ahead over tone-deaf dialogue, adverbs proliferating like some invasive species, and long passages of unnecessary description.

You know what I mean: a young adult (YA) novel.

I have no desire to enter the perennial and presumably click-driven debate over whether adults should read YA. Adults should read whatever they want, whether that means YA or Dummies manuals or Tijuana Bibles or even Thomas L. Friedman. But kids are a different story. The literature they are exposed to will influence not only their adult reading habits but their personalities and inner lives. Today’s parents are likely correct to assume that little Jason or Chloe will not be taught to love reading by Ethan Frome. But there is plenty on the spectrum between Edith Wharton and Divergent, and it is going unnoticed.

Crime fiction—noir, detective novels, police procedurals, and madcap adventures in the Carl Hiaasen vein—may be the perfect thing to whet a young person’s appetite for reading. At first glance, it is an odd candidate for this task: Isn’t it violent, frightening, and perhaps even a corrupting influence? Isn’t it laced with profanity and, in some cases, sexually explicit?

Yes, but the same is true of so much of the music, television, film, and even network news that parents are helpless to keep from their children. The same is true, for that matter, of many YA novels with far less literary merit than the best crime writing.

Parents have always fretted about the moral content of what their kids read. Andrew Levy’s Huck Finn’s America (2014) details the 19th-century panic over dime novels about pirates and banditry. David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague (2008) details the furor over horror comic books in the 1950s. However one is inclined to regard the sensitivities of those eras, the fact remains that their scandalous productions are seldom revered as art. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, and Elmore Leonard have, by contrast, all been enshrined in the Library of America.

These men wrote violent, lurid trash, yet they are now as canonical as Irving, Hawthorne, and Twain. And you can give said trash to your kids without a pang of conscience, knowing that they will encounter in it something of the American literary tradition. That is not, on its own, reason enough to choose crime fiction over either classic literature or YA, and a balanced diet should probably include all of the above. Still, crime fiction combines the best of both the classics and modern YA, while adding some nourishing ingredients of its own.

The best crime writing is excellent prose at the sentence level, and while it may not be up to the standard of a Melville or Twain (what is?), at least it handily surpasses the best-written YA. The classic opening line of James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss (1978), a book Otto Penzler of the Mysterious Bookshop and the Mysterious Press considers the ne plus ultra of detective stories, was quoted in several of Crumley’s obituaries:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Few novelists in the Western canon have written better or more evocative dialogue than George V. Higgins in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970): His grim characters never sound like anyone you know, but you know they must be out there somewhere. At the same time, most crime fiction, like YA, is aggressively, unapologetically plot-driven, with nothing to skip, making it ideal for those with Disney Channel attention spans. And needless to say, the sex and violence that might make crime fiction a tough sell for parents make it anything but for kids, who crave a taste of the forbidden.

Crime fiction presents not only the forbidden but also the merely grown-up. It affords an entrée into the adult world. Its protagonists are not vampires, wizards, or futuristic reality-show contestants but real people with real jobs. Along with private eyes, one finds in the pages of crime literature insurance agents (James M. Cain), process servers and bail bondsmen (Elmore Leonard), profilers and forensic scientists (Thomas Harris), park rangers (Nevada Barr), military policemen (Lee Child), and undercover cops (Matt Burgess). At a time when children are led to believe that they can get rich off an app or a pop single, such exposure to hard, dangerous, selfless work is invaluable.

Crime writing is, by definition, travel writing—and sometimes time-travel writing—as well. The best crime writers mark their territory and then bring it to life. Dashiell Hammett and James Ellroy can take you to California; James Crumley to Montana; Elmore Leonard to Detroit; James Lee Burke to Louisiana; Charles Willeford and Carl Hiaasen to Florida; Daniel Woodrell to the Ozarks; Dennis Lehane to Boston; and Richard Price to New York City. Get your kids a library card, and they will know their country and its underbelly—and develop a sense of empathy and curiosity—long before the time comes for a college tour.

By empathy and curiosity, I do not mean gullibility. Crime writers rarely glamorize crime and violence the way television and movies do. They do not present bad guys who are always victims of society and circumstance. Often they fulfill a scared-straight function, showing how one decision born of greed or impatience can send a life into a tailspin of cascading failure. The “ten rules” in Leonard’s Swag are applied selectively, as a teenager would apply them: The thing most likely to go wrong is always brushed aside with a flourish of wishful thinking. This juvenile sense of Teflon untouchability, this inability to know who or what to trust, is what dooms the born loser of a crime novel.

I didn’t read my first crime novel (Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest) until college, where I shared my appreciation for the Continental Op with a friend whose brother worked in private investigation. I wish my teachers had given it to me sooner. It taught me to demand a story from everything that I read. It showed me a moral universe both more ambiguous and more exacting than anything I had hitherto encountered. It taught me that, notwithstanding man’s fallen nature, good and evil are not primitive myths.

If kids today need to be tricked and conned into reading something worthwhile, something as morally instructive and beautifully written as it is entertaining, then these bloody, crazy books ought to enjoy pride of place in every school library in America.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Why your children should read crime fiction
Hillary and her lapdog media

July 2, 2015

media, US politics
From, of all places, Mother Jones:

On Tuesday night, the State Department released some 3,000 pages of emails between Hillary Clinton and her aides during her tenure as secretary of state. The correspondence offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of American diplomacy in action, as well as the former first lady’s fashion choices. But some of the more intriguing exchanges involved the media—how her team sought to shape the news, the journalists they considered receptive to their message, and the close degree to which Clinton monitored how she was covered.

Much of this email traffic involved Philippe Reines, a senior advisor and spokesman for Clinton known for his combative exchanges with the press. One email thread that underscored the Clinton team’s focus on message-control came in late May 2009, ahead of a meeting of the Organization of American States. Its member-nations span North and South America and were poised to vote on whether to revoke Cuba’s decades-long suspension from OAS. …

After OAS members voted to revoke Cuba’s suspension, Clinton wrote to her advisers on June 3, 2009: “CNN is reporting this as being done against my wishes. Any way to salvage?”

Reines replied with a lengthy email explaining why the narrative was not as “dire as it seems in the moment.” He noted that President Barack Obama would be delivering a major speech in the Middle East the following day that would “blanket coverage and extinguish the Cuba stuff, so we just need to weather the night.”

He wrote:

we are suffering from two significant tactical problems: 1) you are here and removed 2) our press corps was out of position today and in flight, so the people we worked on all week and the ones likely to skew our way were replaced by reporters not connected to us. The two issues above will be rectified tomorrow in your two interviews – especially Greta who is malleable. We can use that to make a strong case on the principle, and the simple fact Cuba wasn’t in the OAS yesterday, and won’t be tomorrow. Everyday that passes reinforces that point. The time difference to East Coast will help us in moving whatever is said in these interviews tomorrow.

In his email, Reines was referring to an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, which aired the following day. The topic of the OAS meeting did indeed come up:

VAN SUSTEREN: I know you’ve been to Honduras. The OAS, after you left—it looks like Cuba’s going to be invited back in.

CLINTON: No, that wasn’t the outcome.

VAN SUSTEREN: It wasn’t the outcome? What happened?

CLINTON: Well, we were very adamantly opposed to those who wanted to lift the 1962 suspension and leave it at that. That was not acceptable to the United States. That’s, unfortunately, the path that they were on earlier. And we made the case to many countries and found a receptive audience that we could agree to lift something from so long ago that was really part of the cold war, but we had to reaffirm the values and principles of the OAS. We had to explicitly reaffirm democracy and human rights. And then we had to have a process.

So yes, you can lift the suspension, but that’s the beginning, that’s not the end. Then Cuba has to decide whether it wishes to become a member of the OAS. And then the OAS must, according to its practices, purposes and principles, enter into a dialogue with Cuba and make a decision.

So this was the beginning. Unlike what some had hoped, to have a kind of fait accompli, we were able to create a consensus that the majority of countries in the OAS agreed with the United States.

VAN SUSTEREN: So we haven’t been snubbed.

CLINTON: Oh, not at all. In fact, this was a very good example of the kind of diplomatic engagement that we want to be involved with.

Later that year, Reines emailed Clinton a PDF of the “gorgeous cover” of Time magazine, which carried a cover story by Joe Klein on Clinton.

“How does the article compare to the cover???” she replied.

At another point in 2009, Clinton received an email from Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a major fundraiser for her 2008 presidential campaign and a leading PUMA (Party Unity, My Ass) activist who opposed Obama’s nomination that year. Rothschild told Clinton of her recent get-together with Leslie Gelb, the onetime president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a veteran New York Times journalist:

H,
I spent yesterday with Les Gelb on Nantucket. He had lots to say which might be of interest, but I thought the most important thing to tell you is to make sure you are aware of the Parade magazine piece he wants to do about you. He would like to do a day in your life, when you meet with members of Congress and international figures. He wants to show the impact you are having domestically and internationally. He said he would give you a veto over content and looked me in the eye and said, “she will like it”. Maybe you know this, but did not want it to fall between the cracks. Enjoy your vacation and love to all of you.
Xoxo,
L

Clinton forwarded Rothschild’s email to her staff: “Pls see below and scheduling options requested. Is this a cover story? Does anyone know?”

An aide later replied, “Yes, we’re trying to find a date that works for Les, but he is a little, shall we say picky.”

Clinton responded, “We should create a day–meeting w Webb about Burma, McCain/Lieberman/Graham about Af-Pak, etc. Meeting w Mitchell/Holbrooke etc.” (She was referring to Jim Webb, John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, George Mitchell, and Richard Holbrooke.)

Gelb did indeed get his day-in-life-with-Hillary piece, which ran in Parade on October 25, 2009.

“Our 24 hours together would prove both grueling and inspirational, full of diplomatic pageantry, big meetings with policy brainiacs, small sessions with trusted aides, a stream of time-consuming formal duties, and, of course, phone calls and more phone calls,” Gelb wrote. The day included a meeting with Holbrooke, the late diplomat then serving as the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who described “a practical way to counter Taliban propaganda and enhance America’s image in Pakistan.” George Mitchell also made a cameo in the story: “On a line electronically secured from eavesdroppers, she converses with George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy (twice).”

Gelb concluded his story: “The Secretary, with her unfailing smile, repairs to her office for more calls and reading. It’s hard to read the mind of someone frozen in the public spotlight like Hillary Clinton. She has to be perpetually onstage. But what I think I glimpse beneath the unflagging smile and constant concentration is a very tired person—tense, frustrated, but absolutely determined to make her tenure as Secretary of State a success and to accomplish important things.”

The Founding Fathers did not risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so the media could act as the PR arm of a presidential candidate. Van Susteren should be ashamed of herself. I doubt Gelb, a longtime lefty, is capable of that.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Hillary and her lapdog media
Obama vs. the First Amendment

June 25, 2015

media, US politics
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch of Reason magazine:

For the past two weeks, Reason, a magazine dedicated to “Free Minds and Free Markets,” has been barred by an order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from speaking publicly about a grand jury subpoena that court sent to Reason.com.

The subpoena demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Shortly after the subpoena was issued, the government issued a gag order prohibiting Reason not only from discussing the matter but even acknowledging the existence of the subpoena or the gag order itself. As a wide variety of media outlets have noted, such actions on the part of the government are not only fundamentally misguided and misdirected, they have a tangible chilling effect on free expression by commenters and publications alike.

[June 18], after preparing an extensive legal brief, Reason asked the US Attorney’s Office to join with it in asking that the gag order – now moot and clearly an unconstitutional prior restraint – be lifted. This morning, the US Attorney’s Office asked the Court to vacate the order, which it did. We are free to tell the story for the first time.

On May 31, Nick Gillespie published a post at Reason.com’s Hit & Run blog discussing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s “haunting sentencing letter” to District Court Judge Katherine Forrest, and the judge’s harsh response. Gillespie noted that Forrest “more than threw the book” at Ulbricht by giving him a life sentence, which was a punishment “beyond even what prosecutors…asked for.”

In the comments section of the post, six readers published reactions that drew the investigative ire of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In a federal grand jury subpoena dated June 2, the U.S. District Court commanded Reason.com to turn over “any and all identifying information” we had about the individuals posting those comments.

This is the first time Reason.com has received such a subpoena from any arm of government.

From press accounts of similar actions at other news publications and social media sites, we know that it is increasingly common for the federal government to demand user information from publications and websites while also stifling their speech rights with gag orders and letters requesting “voluntary” confidentiality. Exactly how common is anyone’s guess; we are currently investigating just how widespread the practice may be.

The federal government’s command for information—and request for silence—ironically came just days after the Supreme Court, in Elonis v. United States, strongly limited the scope of what counts as a true “threat” online. In that case, the Court voided the conviction of Anthony Elonis, who had published on Facebook rap lyrics depicting violence against his estranged wife and as a result been sentenced to 44 months in prison for making threats. The Court ruled that context needs to be taken into account when evaluating the true nature of the threatening actions being described. “Federal criminal liability,” the justices wrote, “generally does not turn solely on the results of an act without considering the defendant’s mental state.”

Unfortunately, that precedent is mostly irrelevant in our case. In America, grand juries have almost limitless ability to investigate whatever they want, regardless of whether that investigation has any chance of producing a constitutionally permissible conviction. Grand juries are widely regarded as playthings of ambitious prosecutors, who famously are able to indict “ham sandwiches“—at least, as long as those sandwiches aren’t police officers accused of brutality.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara subpoenaed all of the identifying information we had about the authors of such comments as, “Its (sic) judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.” And, “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first.” This last comment is a well-known Internet reference to the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo.

The subpoena also covered such obviously harmless comments as: “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,” and “I’d prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well.”

The comments are hyperbolic, in questionable taste–and fully within the norms of Internet commentary.

It’s worth stressing that, under established legal precedent, Reason.com (like any other website) is generally not legally responsible for reader comments posted at our site. Still, the chilling effect on Reason and our commenters is tangible. It takes time, money and resources to challenge, or even simply to comply with, such intrusive demands.

The original subpoena, received late on Tuesday, June 2, did not come with a gag order. However, it came with a letter from Bharara and Assistant U.S. Attorney Niketh Velamoor requesting that we refrain from informing any other parties about the subpoena so as to “preserve the confidentiality of the investigation,” and that we notify his office in advance if we intended to do so, even though it also said that we were under “no obligation” to keep the subpoena confidential.

We had three options: We could 1) abide quietly with the subpoena, 2) attempt to quash it, and/or 3) alert the commenters named in the subpoena.

Option 1, quietly abiding, was a non-starter for us.

As for Option 2, our chances of prevailing in that sort of legal challenge—given the extremely wide-ranging authority of federal grand juries, and the precedents set in cases such as In re Grand Jury Subpoena No. 11116275, 846 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2012), involving an anonymous poster on Twitter—was in practical effect, virtually nil.

In the Twitter case, an anonymous poster moved to quash a grand jury subpoena to Twitter that arose from online postings of a sexual nature about then-congresswoman Michele Bachmann. In that case, Twitter received the subpoena and notified the anonymous poster about it, letting him know that the company would comply with the subpoena unless he filed a motion to quash. The court denied his motion, holding that the poster’s First Amendment right to comment anonymously must yield to the government’s “compelling interest” in knowing his identity.

So we decided, against the government’s request but well within our legal rights, to choose Option 3: notify and share the full subpoena with the six targeted commenters so that they would have a chance to assert their First Amendment rights to anonymity and defend themselves legally against the order.

At about 10:30 am ET on Thursday, June 4, our attorney Gayle Sproul (of Levine, Sullivan, Koch, & Schulz) called Velamoor to discuss the subpoena. The call did not go well. Sproul asked Velamoor to consider scaling back the scope of the subpoena by omitting the more benign commenters. Velamoor said simply, “No.” Then Sproul informed him that we would be notifying our commenters about the subpoena to give them the chance to defend their rights to remain anonymous, and that we would not comply with the subpoena as it related to any commenters who moved to quash the subpoena before our compliance deadline. Sproul explained to him that there is case law firmly establishing that these commenters have the right to speak anonymously, and that we would withhold the information of anyone fighting the subpoena. Velamoor disputed that any such free speech rights exist. He asked that we delay notifying the commenters so he could get a court order prohibiting us from disclosing the subpoena to them. We refused. Sproul pointed out that we were perfectly within our rights to share the subpoena given the law and the wording of his own letter. Velamoor then suggested that Reason was “coming close” to interfering with the grand jury investigation. The call ended abruptly.

Immediately following that conversation (at about 11:00 am ET on June 4), Reason Publisher Mike Alissi sent the subpoena to the six email addresses associated with the user accounts for the comments identified in the subpoena. The email stated:

I am unhappy to report that Reason has received the attached grand jury subpoena from the US District Court/Southern District of New York demanding that we provide all identifying information that we have for several commenters who posted comments in a recent Reason.com thread about the Silk Road case. I am writing you because your email address is associated with one or more of the comments at issue.

Please be aware that we must provide the information that is being demanded by June 9 at 10 am eastern. Please let us know no later than Monday, June 8 at 5 pm eastern if you have filed any motion(s) with the Court opposing the grand jury subpoena. Our attorney has notified the US Attorney’s Office that we are notifying you about this subpoena.

Later that day, at approximately 5:35 pm ET, Velamoor sent Reason a gag order he had later secured blocking us from discussing the subpoena or the order itself with anyone outside of Reason, other than our attorney.

The gag order was accompanied by this email:

Mr. Alissi,

Regarding this subpoena, I spoke to someone who said she was an attorney representing Reason in connection with this subpoena. The attorney indicated that Reason intended to notify the individuals referenced therein about the subpoena. The attorney further refused to provide me any time to take steps to protect the confidentiality of the investigation.

I have obtained the attached Court Order prohibiting Reason from notifying any third party about the subpoena.

Please forward the Order to the attorney and any other individuals who should be aware of it.

Thank you

Niketh V. Velamoor
Assistant United States Attorney
Southern District of New York
One Saint Andrew’s Plaza
New York, NY 10007

(Sproul had identified herself and provided contact information to him.)

Since receipt of the gag order on June 4, and until this moment, Reason has not spoken with any outside parties about the subpoena or the gag order. We originally intended to publish the subpoena as part of a Reason.com story about it after the reply deadline; unfortunately, the gag order put those plans on ice.

Having already suggested that Reason might have interfered with a grand jury investigation, Velamoor contacted Sproul on the afternoon of Friday, June 5, in response to a letter from her explaining the commenters’ constitutional rights and laying out the timeline of Reason’s notification to them. Velamoor told her that he now had “preliminary information” suggesting that Reason was in violation of the court order. Sproul said we were not and asked for further information. Velamoor refused to give any specifics, saying simply that he was “looking into it further.”

So as of this point in the saga, Reason had been subpoenaed, we had been vaguely—and falsely—accused by a United States Attorney’s office of actions verging on obstruction of justice and contempt of court, and we were now told that we were being investigated further.

None of the six commenters informed us that they would be filing motions to oppose the U.S. Attorney’s subpoena. Therefore we complied with the subpoena on the deadline of June 9.

Providing the subpoena to the commenters before the gag order was issued is what presumably enabled it to become public. That has had the effect of bringing to light what these compulsory grabs for information look like, launching a wide number of conversations about a grand jury process in which the government can target individuals, platforms, and publications for data about users.

(For a relatively comprehensive list of coverage of the matter go to this post at the legal blog Popehat, which published the first article on the subpoena and its implications.)

Reason’s experience needs to be understood in a larger context. Especially since the 9/11 attacks, there has been a mounting conflict between the values of free speech and constitutional due process, with government making increasing demands–often under threat of punishment–for all sorts of information from innocent citizens. Coupled with the rise of a secretive and pervasive surveillance state, this tension means that Americans have no way of knowing just how unfree their speech really is.

While it is impossible to fully ascertain the frequency of information requests from local, state, and federal law enforcement, there is every reason to believe websites are subjected to thousands of demands each year. It is also not clear how other websites interpret the type of letter requesting “voluntary” confidentiality that Reason received. How often is that letter sent along with subpoenas? And how often does it achieve its intended effect of securing silence? In other words, does it have the same effect as a gag order?

In 2013, for instance, Mother Jones reported that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft have between them received “tens of thousands of requests for user data from the US government annually,” covering hundreds of thousands of accounts. Using corporate transparency reports, the magazine estimated that the companies complied with the demands between 72 percent and 89 percent of the time, and that it’s impossible to know how many of those requests were filled without the affected users ever knowing their information had been targeted.

Also confusing the discussion about these orders is that different categories of cases have different rules and procedures, with some granting more power to targets than others. “Unlike grand jury subpoenas, subpoenas for commenter information in civil cases and in public criminal prosecutions are easier for websites to deflect. The information sought there may be truly tangential and the parties may be willing to negotiate,” Sproul told Reason. “But, as in this case, when a grand jury subpoena targets specific information that it contends is necessary to an investigation and can demonstrate the link, any fight is going to be a seriously uphill battle.”

Regardless of the legal details, the growing government demand for user data and our own experience with court-enforced silence on a self-evidently ridiculous investigation raise important questions about free speech and the abuse of power.

Reason’s unmoderated comment space is rare among comparable publications and has, over the years, developed into a forum that is by turns exciting, intellectually advanced, outlandish, cringe-inducing, and more foul-mouthed than any locker room this side of the Crab Nebula. It is something to be celebrated as a voluntary community that can be engaged or ignored as the spirit moves you (we say that as writers whose work and physical shortcomings rarely escape unscathed from any thread). However trollish many of our commenters can be, they have created a sphere of free speech that delivers on one of the great promises of the Internet, which is unbridled expression, dialogue, and argument.

We took risks by creating an autonomous zone in which our readers are left to their own devices. Some of the risk is reputational—how many other serious outlets allow anonymous commenters to run riot as we do? Some of the risk is legal, as in the current situation. …

Due in part to the government’s secrecy and possible gag orders or requests for “voluntary” confidentiality, we don’t know whether Google or other media outlets have been subpoenaed in this particular case. Judge Forrest’s sentencing and comments in the Silk Road trial have drawn widespread criticism in corners of the Internet that value privacy and oppose the ruinous drug war. The potential number of critical comments subject to the District Court’s low bar for investigative compulsion is enormous. Now multiply that number by the number of controversial court cases, and you could quickly get to the point where federal courts were doing nothing but investigating online trolls. Surely there are more pressing tasks, ones that don’t involve suppressing the speech of journalistic outlets known to be critical of government overreach.

Reason’s guiding principle over 47 years has been to expand the legal and cultural space for free expression, as the bedrock value behind human flourishing. As libertarians who believe in “Free Minds and Free Markets,” Reason takes seriously an obligation to our audience and to our critics not simply to hold on to what we’ve got but to increase the rights of everyone to speak openly and without figurative or literal prior restraint.

To live in a world where every stray, overheated Internet comment—however trollish and stupid it may be—can be interpreted as an actionable threat to be investigated by a federal grand jury is to live in a world where the government is telling the public and media to just shut up already. As we gather and publish more information on just how often this sort of thing happens, we pledge to always be on the side of more speech rather than less.

As I pointed out the first time I blogged on this, since the Clinton administration U.S. attorneys are appointed by every new president. (Janet Reno started the odious practice of firing every U.S. attorney and replacing them with, in Reno’s case, Clintonites.) So, like everything else Barack Obama has done wrong, this one’s on him too. Democrats obviously no longer believe in civil liberties, particularly free expression.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Obama vs. the First Amendment
Obligatory offense ahead

June 25, 2015

media, US politics, Wisconsin politics
I will be on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin show Friday at 8 a.m. for Joy’s Friday Week in Review segment.

Wisconsin Public Radio’s Ideas Network can be heard on WHA (970 AM) in Madison, WLBL (930 AM) in Auburndale, WHID (88.1 FM) in Green Bay, WHWC (88.3 FM) in Menomonie, WRFW (88.7 FM) in River Falls, WEPS (88.9 FM) in Elgin, Ill., WHAA (89.1 FM) in Adams, WHBM (90.3 FM) in Park Falls, WHLA (90.3 FM) in La Crosse, WRST (90.3 FM) in Oshkosh, WHAD (90.7 FM) in Delafield, W215AQ (90.9 FM) in Middleton, KUWS (91.3 FM) in Superior, WHHI (91.3 FM) in Highland, WSHS (91.7 FM) in Sheboygan, WHDI (91.9 FM) in Sister Bay, WLBL (91.9 FM) in Wausau, W275AF (102.9 FM) in Ashland, W300BM (107.9 FM) in Madison, and of course online at www.wpr.org.

My foil this week is a familiar name, Bill Lueders, formerly of Isthmus, now of The Progressive magazine after time with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. He should be familiar because during the Act 10 battle royal our on-air discussion got so heated that I think a hockey-style fight might have broken out had I been in the studio. We were able to laugh about that when we met years later.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Obligatory offense ahead
From Williams to Wisconsin

June 22, 2015

media
There were two big media news items last week, one national, one closer to home.

To some people’s surprise but not mine, NBC announced that Brian Williams will not be returning to anchor NBC Nightly News, at least not now. Lester Holt, who anchored on weekends and replaced him during his prevarication-caused leave of absence, will now get the job on weeknights.

The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi reports:

Ousted NBC anchor Brian Williams began his apology tour on Friday, saying on the “Today” show that he “got it wrong” when he told exaggerated stories about his reporting but declining to say he lied.

In his first public comments since being suspended by NBC in February, Williams told co-host Matt Lauer that “what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been examined to death by me. I’m responsible for this and I’m sorry.”

But under prodding by Lauer, Williams would not admit that his serial exaggerations constituted lying. Instead, he said, it was “my ego getting the better of me” and “came from a bad place inside me” when he told stories about himself that were “wrong.”

NBC on Thursday said Williams would return to the air, but not on “NBC Nightly News,” which Williams has led as anchor and managing editor for the past 11 years. Instead, he has been reassigned to MSNBC, the network’s little-watched cable channel, and will serve in a vaguely defined role as a breaking-news anchor.

Williams, 56, was suspended by NBC for six months in February after he said on “Nightly News” that the military helicopter he was traveling in at the start of the Iraq War in 2003 was damaged by rocket fire. In fact, it had not been, and Williams was taken to task by American veterans who were eyewitnesses to the events Williams described.

The episode triggered an explosion of reporting about Williams’s characterizations of his other reporting exploits. News articles turned up multiple instances in which he exaggerated or embellished his role. The stories involved Williams’s descriptions of his experiences covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006 and the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011, among others.

“Came from a bad place inside me”? What does that mean? (Was the appendix removed before it could explode in 1983 “a bad place inside me”?)

The Poynter Institute does some after-the-fact scriptwriting:

Brian Williams’ attempt to explain himself to the Today Show’s Matt Lauer didn’t explain anything. And one reason his mea culpa rang hollow is because Williams did what children and criminals do; he used passive verbs when he should have used active verbs.

Williams said:

“I would like to take this opportunity to say that what has happened in the past has been identified and torn apart by me and has been fixed. Has been dealt with. And going forward there are going to be different rules of the road.“

He does not say WHAT has been identified or WHAT has happened. He does not say HOW those mistakes have been fixed and he does not say what the new rules of the road will be. I wish he had said something like:

“I exaggerated or fabricated 10 stories that I told on late night talk shows and speeches. (Then name them.) In each case, I apologized to the people who were harmed. In the future I will stick to doing the news. ”

Williams said:

“I am sorry for what happened here.”

Something didn’t just happen. Somebody caused it to happen. He should have said:

“I hurt my news organization, I hurt my colleagues, I hurt my family and I have made a wreck of my career. I am truly and deeply sorry for what I did. I am solely responsible for what I said. I am deeply grateful to NBC that I have a job. Most of all, I apologize to the viewers of NBC Nightly news for having squandered their trust in me. I will now spend the rest of my career trying to gain that trust back.”

He said:

“It had to have been my ego that made me think I had to be sharper, funnier, quicker than anybody else. I put myself closer to the action-having been at the action in the beginning.”

He should have said,

“I tried to be sharper and funnier and quicker than anybody else so I put myself closer to the action than I really was. I was feeding my ego.”

There is no need to remind us your stories were partly true. Now is the time to own mistakes, not justify them. Everybody has exaggerated some experience to make himself/herself look more accomplished or heroic than we are. Just own it. …

Williams also spoke about his statements as if someone else was inside his body. He blamed the misstatements, exaggerations and some call them lies on “a bad place,” “a bad urge inside me.” And he said, “What happened is the fault of a whole host of other sins. What happened is clearly part of my ego getting the better of me.”

In a follow-up question Lauer tried again to pry some ownership out of Williams. Did he mean to mislead? Williams went back to that spirit inside of him:

“No it came from a bad place. It came from a sloppy choice of words. I told stories that were not true over the years. Looking back, it is very clear that I never intended to, it got mixed up, it got turned around in my mind.”

There’s that passive ownership again. IT came from a bad place. IT got mixed up. IT got turned around. Own the mistake by saying. “I exaggerated the facts to make myself look better.”

“It came from a bad place” is like saying “The devil made me do it.”

Amazingly, even in the Today interview, he still got facts wrong. About the helicopter story that touched off this whole mess, Williams said on Today:

“I told the story correctly for years before I told it incorrectly. That, to me, is a huge difference here. After that incident I tried and failed as others have tried and failed-and why is it that when we’re trying to say ‘I’m sorry,’ that we can’t come out and say ‘I’m sorry?’”

Nope. Wrong. The problem here is that the helicopter story was wrong from the first time he told it on Dateline NBC. In that report he said the formation he was flying in came under fire. It didn’t. So he told the story incorrectly from the first and kept getting it wrong. Now, in his apology interview he gets it wrong again?

And the second part of that statement is one any parent identifies as the “others do it” cop-out. He said he tried and failed as others try and fail to say I am sorry. It is a juke move to get away from his botched apology on Nightly News that led to this mess. He could have accepted responsibility in January but didn’t.

Conservative skeptics of Williams’ work are not going to be mollified by his move to MSNBC, which takes liberalism to stupid depths. (See Maddow, Rachel, and Schultz, Ed.)

This is not necessarily the end for Williams at NBC. Peter Jennings became ABC’s anchor at 26 years old, and wasn’t very good at it.

ABC took him off its evening newscast and sent him out to report, and 10 years later he was back as an anchor of ABC’s three-headed “World News Tonight,” and then became its only anchor 15 years after that.

The difference, though, is that Jennings was put in front of the big camera before he was ready, as the face of a bad news organization. (ABC-TV’s gremlin-plagued coverage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination came two years before Jennings showed up.) Jennings, who came to ABC from Canada’s CTV and was the son of a CBC-TV news anchor, apparently annoyed American viewers by such foibles as Canadian pronunciations and grammar. (Apparently no one at ABC tried to correct him, or it didn’t take.)

That wasn’t about basic credibility (other than for being a Canadian reporting on the U.S.). Williams’ viewers not only will be reminded of his self-exaggeration, but will wonder what else he’s said that wasn’t entirely true, which leads to credibility questions for the rest of his career.

Meanwhile, my former (and, hint hint, future) foil on Wisconsin Public Radio, Bill Lueders, reports:

The Wisconsin State Journal has launched a new round of staff cuts that look more like slashes, laying off four staffers and announcing that three key departures will go unfilled.

Among the layoff victims are columnist Doug Moe, a veteran Madison journalist whom the paper hired away from the jointly owned Capital Times in 2008; sports columnist Andy Baggot, who has written for the paper since 1978; and sports columnist Dennis Semrau, who has covered local prep sports and the Milwaukee Brewers for decades. Brandon Storlie, who joined the paper in 2009 and has worked as a reporter and sports copy editor, has also been laid off.

Sources says these layoffs, announced to staff late Thursday afternoon by State Journal editor John Smalley, were not voluntary. …

In addition, staff was told that the State Journal will not be refilling the positions of Dee Hall, who has left the paper to work for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism; reporter Dan Simmons, who covers higher education; and part-time books editor Jeanne Kolker. Simmons apparently agreed to be laid off.“Yesterday was my last at the State Journal,” Simmons wrote on his Facebook page this morning. “Some great colleagues who certainly weren’t planning to be jobless are out of work. And as always the community gets worse with fewer scribes to watch for shenanigans and tell great stories.”

Moe, whose resume includes freelancing for Isthmus, serving as editor of Madison Magazine and writing a series of books, is widely regarded as among the best writers in Madison, with vast contacts and community knowledge. Baggot, Semrau and Simmons also have broad followings and deep experience covering their beats. And Kolker almost single-handedly covered the local book beat, in a city where there is a great deal of interest in books.

But in fact, experience is exactly what papers seeking to trim staff seem most determined to lose, because longer-tenured staffers receive slightly higher salaries. In February, the Scripps Washington Bureau laid off journalists including four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Sydney Freedberg and two-time Polk award winner Marcia Myers. Other Pulitzer Prize winners to get the ax in recent years include Chicago Sun-Times photographer John White, San Diego Union-Tribune reporter David Hasemyer, and Newsweek/Daily Beast fashion journalist Robin Givhan.

The layoffs at the State Journal are part of a company-wide belt-tightening. Sources say The Capital Times has also asked for layoff volunteers. And it is unclear whether the paper intends to fill the gap left by the recent voluntary departure of business reporter Mike Ivey. “No comment,” wrote editor Paul Fanlund, in response to a question on this.

George Hesselberg, a longtime State Journal reporter, lamented the cuts.

“Any loss to newsrooms at the State Journal and The Capital Times is a loss to the community.” Hesselberg said. “It means fewer experienced eyes, and that’s not good for the community.”

I wonder whether Fanlund, a former business reporter who has been beating on business interests since becoming The Capital Times editor, will now criticize himself for signing off on his own job cuts.

That is, meanwhile, a lot of experience to cut loose. I have been reading Baggot since approximately middle school. Moe’s column was a must-read for anyone with interest in Madison. He was one of the best pickups of the State Journal when The Capital Times stopped daily publication.

I grew up reading the State Journal. (Starting, according to my parents, when I was 2.) I wanted to work at the State Journal for years, and the State Journal refused to hire me. And apparently it was a good thing the State Journal didn’t, since I probably would now be a former State Journal staffer.

At the risk of making a statement against my professional interests: People read print publications to read the writers, not the management.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on From Williams to Wisconsin
When the old days were better … unless they weren’t

June 19, 2015

media, Music
For those who think entertainment of previous days was better than now, here are two pieces of evidence for your argument.

The first is from film director William Friedkin, who said, says London’s Daily Mail:

Exorcist director William Friedkin has launched a withering attack on today’s flood of superhero and sci-fi movies, accusing them of lacking any substance and ruining cinema.

‘Films used to be rooted in gravity,’ the acclaimed 79-year-old said as he attended the Champs-Elysees Film Festival in Paris.

‘They were about real people doing real things.’

Today, he says ‘cinema is all about Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Avengers, Hunger Games in America: all kinds of stuff that I have no interest in seeing at all.’

That race by studios to appeal to the broadest audience possible is why his own movies fell out of favour after his peak in the 1970s, he admitted.

‘That is when my films went like that – out of the frame,’ said Friedkin, whose films The Exorcist and French Connection both won Oscars.

Friedkin says he saw the change happen in 1977 when he made what he considered his best movie – the largely ignored Sorcerer about four men transporting a cargo of nitroglycerin in South America – only to see it eclipsed by the huge hit of that year: Star Wars.

Now Friedkin reckons ‘the best work’ for directors is on television, on U.S. cable and video-on-demand services that produce quality series such as True Detective and House of Cards.

The shift to those outlets, he said, is the ‘new zeitgeist’.

‘You develop character at a greater length and the story is more complex and deeper than cinema,’ the director said.

‘Many of the fine filmmakers of today are going to long-form TV. It is the most welcoming place to work for a director today.’

Friedkin is looking to ride that wave, working on a script for the HBO cable network about Mae West, the American sex symbol and entertainer counted as one of Hollywood’s biggest ever stars.

He has spoken to Bette Midler about playing the part.

He is also looking at turning another of his big films, To Live and Die in LA, into a TV series, with different characters and plot.

If his past work serves as inspiration for what he’s doing today, it’s in no small part due to the fact that he has long been fascinated by the timeless theme of good versus evil.

‘Most of my films are about the thin line between good and evil that exists in everyone,’ he said.

‘I believe that within all of us, there is a good side and a dark side. And it’s a constant struggle to have your good side triumph over the dark side.

‘And sometimes people don’t and lose control of themselves.’

Although his NYC-cop-in-France movie The French Connection and the demon-possession drama The Exorcist made him a star director at the time, his later films never scaled such heights.

But Friedkin resisted going back and doing the sequels to his masterpieces, saying it would have been purely about the money.

‘I am not interested’ in making movies just for the pay-cheque, Friedkin said. ‘I have to love the film, the story, the characters.’

His Exorcist movie ‘was enough,’ he said. ‘There were four sequels to The Exorcist and I’ve seen none of them, nor do I want to or intend to.’

Likewise, with 1971’s The French Connection, which starred Gene Hackman and won five Oscars, there was ‘nothing more that could be said’.

That demurral didn’t stop the production of a 1975 sequel, also with Hackman and directed by John Frankenheimer, who notably made the original The Manchurian Candidate.

I had not realized (which means I didn’t bother to look) that Friedkin wasn’t involved in any of the Exorcist sequels, or of the second French Connection movie. That should have been his clue that the studios are more interested in making money than “films rooted in gravity.”

I wonder if Friedkin realizes the irony of turning his movie “To Live and Die in L.A.” …

… into a TV series, which makes him guilty of what Hollywood is accused of — lack of new ideas. And “good versus evil” as a story only goes back to the Book of Genesis.

I have seen “Sorcerer” …

… but “Gone with the Wind” would have been swamped by “Star Wars,” which is only the most watched science fiction movie of all time, because it’s got a great story accessible to non-sci-fi fans. You’d think Friedkin would appreciate the latter part.

I stopped watching the “Batman” movies around George Clooney. (Or was it Val Kilmer? I forgot.) I enjoyed the “Iron Man” movies, but have watched none of the other superhero flicks. (Particularly “The Green Hornet,” which committed the sin of not taking its source material at all sincerely or seriously.) To say that Hollywood lacks originality isn’t an original observation, which doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.

Here’s an interesting exercise: The top grossing movies from 1971 …
1. “Fiddler on the Roof,” $75.6 million.
2. “The French Connection,” $51.7 million.
3. “Diamonds Are Forever,” $43.8 million.
4. “Dirty Harry,” $36 million.
5. “Billy Jack,” $32.5 million.
6. “Summer of ’42,” $32.1 million.
7. “The Last Picture Show,” $29.1 million.
8. “Carnal Knowledge,” $28.6 million
9. “A Clockwork Orange,” $26.6 million.
10. “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” $17.9 million.
… and 1973 …
1. “The Sting,” $156 million.
2. “The Exorcist,” $128 million.
3. “American Graffiti,” $96.3 million.
4. “Papillon,” $53.2 million.
5. “The Way We Were,” $45 million.
6. “Magnum Force,” $39.8 million.
7. “Last Tango in Paris,” $36.1 million.
8. “Live and Let Die,” $35.4 million.
9. “Robin Hood,” $32.1 million.
10. “Paper Moon,” $30.9 million.
One wonders how Friedkin felt about getting beaten out for the number-one movie in box office twice, or about competing for ticket sales with two James Bond movies, two Dirty Harry movies, two Disney movies, and three X-rated movies. As for 1977 (hint: “Sorcerer” isn’t on it):
1. “Star Wars,” $307.3 million.
2. “Smokey and the Bandit,” $126.7 million.
3. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” $116.4 million.
4. “The Goodbye Girl,” $102 million.
5. “Saturday Night Fever,” $94.2 million.
6. “Oh, God!”, $51.1 million.
7. “A Bridge Too Far,” $50.8 million.
8. “The Deep,” $47.4 million.
9. “The Spy Who Loved Me,” $46.8 million.
10. “Annie Hall,” $38.3 million.
Those three years’ top 10 lists are an eclectic mix (1977 alone features two science fiction flicks, four comedies, a World War II movie, a movie written to capitalize on the popularity of “Jaws,” the apotheosis of disco and James Bond again), certainly more so than the 2014 top 10 …
1. “Transformers: Age of Extinction,” $1.1 billion.
2. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” $955.1 million.
3. “Guardians of the Galaxy,” $774.2 million
4. “Maleficent,” $758.4 million.
5. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1,” $752.1 million.
6. “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” $748.1 million.
7. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” $714.8 million.
8. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” $709 million.
9. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” $708.8 million.
10. “Interstellar,” $672.7 million.
… but Friedkin may have been lucky to be in Hollywood during a more creative era than before or since, though note the presence of the seventh and eighth James Bond movies on those ’70s lists. (Notice also that every film on the 2014 top gross list is either a sequel, a remake, inspired by a previous film [“Maleficient” is a takeoff on “Sleeping Beauty”] or based on comic-book characters; in some cases more than one category fits. “Interstellar” is the only original story on that list.) I doubt Hollywood was less money-obsessed then than now, though Hollywood may be more averse to risk as the result of the studios now being owned by publicly traded companies.

Friedkin’s statement about long-form TV being able to tell more complex stories is not exactly a revelation either, though it is a relatively recent development given the growth of pay-cable channels where whatever can be shown in a theater can be revealed on the small screen too — bad language, sexy bits, gory violence, etc. Still, a movie runs two hours. A 12-part hour-long series runs 12 hours, which, last time I checked, is more than two hours. Science fiction fans can look at the difference between the seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and the three “Next Generation” movies as evidence.

Friedkin also forgets the waxing and waning of moviegoers’ wish to escape from the realities of their lives. By 1977, an increasing number of Americans were grasping that things weren’t very good, after Watergate, the losing end of Vietnam, and inflation. “Star Wars” and “Saturday Night Fever” gave people an opportunity to escape, in air conditioned comfort, for a couple of hours. Things are different in 2015, but certainly not better, and most likely worse and getting worse. Why do you suppose “The Wizard of Oz” was so popular just before World War II was ready to break out?

Friedkin also may not realize that his inability to do what he wants with films may be his own fault. (I was going to point out the big egos of Hollywood types, but that would be redundant and obvious.) IMDB.com reports that Friedkin originally wanted Steve McQueen for the title role in “Sorcerer,” but McQueen wanted his then-wife, Ali McGraw, in the movie. Friedkin refused, so McQueen refused, and as a result so did Marcello Mastroianni and Lino Ventura. IMDB adds that the film originally had a budget of $15 million, which ballooned to $21 million, and then grossed only $9 million. That’s not an “Ishtar”-scale disaster, but add to that his nickname of “Hurricane Billy” from his on-set temper, and Friedkin’s probably lucky he’s gotten to direct anything more creative than Heinz ketchup commercials. I’m not sure how Friedkin can call “Sorcerer” “one of my only films I can watch because it came out almost exactly as I intended” when that statement was false starting with casting.

On a related note (get it?), Consequence of Sound reports:

No one would ever dare to compare the writing prowess of artists like Macklemore, Nicki Minaj, and Katy Perry to Chaucer and Ginsberg, but a new study from Andrew Powell-Morse reveals just how dumbed down the lyrics are for songs currently dominating the Billboard charts.

Powell-Morse analyzed the reading levels for 225 songs that spent three or more weeks atop Billboard’s Pop, Country, Rock, and Hip-Hop song charts.

Whereas chart-toppers in 2005 read between a third and fourth grade level, a decade later that average is declining, and fast. In 2014, the reading level of a Billboard No. 1 single averaged between a second and third grade reading level, with the bar trending downward in five of the last 10 years.

Of the four genres analyzed, country music came out with the highest average reading level (3.3), followed by pop (2.9), rock ‘n’ roll (2.9), and R&B/hip-hop (2.6).

At an individual level, the data is even more fascinating. The average reading level of Eminem is a grade-and-a-half higher than Beyoncé, while Nickelback (!) tops Foo Fighters by nearly a number letter grade. In the world of pop music, superstars like Mariah Carey and Adele rank a full number grade higher than the likes of Lady Gaga and Ke$ha.

Of all 225 songs analyzed in the studio, the highest-scoring rock song was Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Dani California” with a reading level of 5.5. Meanwhile, Three Days Grace’s “The Good Life” is the “dumbest” with a reading level of 0.8.

It’s amusing to me that the supposed music of rednecks and other hicks ranks higher in reading complexity than any other genre of popular music. (Country music tells stories, and generally that statement doesn’t apply to the other genres.) Of course, I am in a line of work where we are supposed to write to an eighth-grade reading level. (In my business magazine days, according to our Microsoft Word software, the stories I wrote were generally to a 12th-grade reading level.) And this assumes that people actually listen to the words, which often are a bit unintelligible. (See “Louie Louie.”)

One of the philosophies of The Presteblog is that in the world of entertainment, there is no tie between popularity, or lack thereof, and quality, or lack thereof. Unless something is hideously bad (the “Spock’s Brain” episode of the original “Star Trek”), most people remember the good stuff and forget the ordinary and mediocre movies, TV shows, songs, etc. The other thing possibly at work here is the tie between how difficult something is to do and how good it is. Computers can recreate any instrument, and even fix problems (for instance, bad pitch or thinness) in someone’s voice. (Which explains Britney Spears’ ability to have a singing career.) The state of special effects is such that an actor can stand in front of a green screen that can depict anywhere. Story? Who needs a story? Just blow some stuff up.

When it takes work, the author takes more pride in his or her work. When you have limits, resource or otherwise (the old film Production Code and Television Code, which admittedly no one misses), you have to become creative. (Robert Rodriguez’s film career started with a $7,000 movie, “El Mariachi,” which he financed by selling his blood plasma.) Creativity by computer and the risk aversion of the film studios and record labels (the logical result of their being owned by publicly traded companies) gives you the state of entertainment today, such as it is.
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on When the old days were better … unless they weren’t
The intersection of sports, business and politics

June 12, 2015

media, Sports, Wisconsin business, Wisconsin politics
You’ve read the old saw that politics makes strange bedfellows, and you’re seeing that in the debate over the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal.

But you don’t need to go to Washington to see strange bedfellows. In Madison, some Republicans are pushing a new Bucks arena, and some are opposed, joined, it seems, by all legislative Democrats.

The latter may seem strange since Democrats overwhelm Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, and therefore you’d think Democrats would favor something that would keep some of their constituents employed. Republicans also pushed a Miller Park deal 20 years ago instead of Democrats, one of whom, Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, wanted a downtown baseball stadium instead. The same has been the case with Milwaukee voucher schools, generally supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, two exceptions being Norquist and late Rep. Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee).

The Republican divide over the Bucks is shown by Timothy P. Carney:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to send a quarter-billion dollars in taxpayer money to the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, who are threatening to leave if they don’t get a subsidized new arena.

At the same time, however, presidential candidate Scott Walker wants to convince Republican primary voters nationwide that he is a conservative who can stand up to the special interests.

It’s a tough sell.

Walker, together with local Democratic politicians and the billionaire out-of-state owners of the Bucks, has negotiated a deal whereby the state and local governments pay for half the cost of a new $500 million arena for the NBA team. The state would borrow $55 million to build the arena, costing the state taxpayers $80 million over 20 years when interest is included. City and county governments would cover the rest.

Walker argues that the $250 million gift to the owners — billionaire hedge fund managers Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens, who live in New York — will pay for itself. “The price of doing nothing is not zero. It’s $419 million,” Walker said. “It’s not just a good deal. It’s a really bad deal if we don’t do anything.”

In short, Walker is asserting that the team and the new arena will bring in more tax revenue than the ransom money will cost taxpayers. …

The subsidy undermines Walker’s ability — especially in the general election for president — to tout his record as governor. Walker explains his cuts to government employee benefits and University of Wisconsin spending in terms of necessity — state spending was in disarray, and he had to make tough choices.

But if he’s handing $250 million to the Bucks’ owners, the spending cuts look different. It’s an easy — and not entirely unfair — line of attack for a Democrat: Walker cut $300 million from college kids, so he could give most of it to some millionaire business owners.

No doubt Walker’s subsidy to the Bucks will hurt him politically outside of Milwaukee.

The next question is: Should it?

If you are a fair-minded, thoughtful voter — in the GOP primary or the election — what does Walker’s corporate-welfare deal tell you about the man, about how he would be as president?

First, it shows that Walker’s conservatism — his belief in free enterprise and limited government — is more a disposition, a leaning, than a deeply held principle. He’s against government getting involved unless someone can make a good argument that in this case, it’s good for business. We’ve already learned this lesson, though, from Walker’s support for ethanol when he traveled to Iowa earlier this year.

Second, there’s the toughness question. Walker was supposed to be tough and unbending in the face of special interests—that’s how he beat the powerful government unions and the recall election. But when a league run by billionaires demands ransom of Walker, he forks it over just like your average mayor or governor would.

Third, Walker’s defense of the subsidy shows that he’s not a student of economics. It’s nearly unanimous among economists that stadium subsidies do not pay for themselves, and the research suggests that losing a sports team doesn’t hurt a city’s economy.

All interesting points. I would be more interested in Carney’s point of view on this subject were he actually a Wisconsinite who might have to live with the consequences of the Bucks’ leaving. Carney doesn’t. (More on that shortly.)

Carney seems shocked — shocked! — to find out that Walker is a politician. Walker isn’t that much of a small-government conservative, which should be obvious since there have not been large-scale government-employee layoffs since he’s been governor. (Teacher layoffs happen for the same reason they have always happened — diminishing layoffs in particular classes.)

The other thing Carney misses is the importance to the Republican voter of Walker’s successes against the education and Govzilla establishment, particularly public employee unions, which are a much higher priority among GOP-leaning voters than attacks on business. Teachers and other government employees did not vote for Republicans even before Scott Walker started running for governor.

It is perfectly obvious what is happening here, because it happened with the Brewers and Miller Park in 1996. Democrats are staying away from the Bucks to make Republicans do the heavy legislative work, and if it fails and the Bucks leave, Democrats can blame Republicans for the Bucks’ leaving.

More locally pertinent perspectives come from Rick Esenberg …

When I was a young lawyer, one of my elders at Foley & Lardner taught me the essence of a good settlement in litigation. To paraphrase, you want to reach a deal which is so good for you that the other side will cringe, but not so bad for them that they won’t shrug. Although negotiation professionals often bang on about “win-win” solutions, most one-off deals – unless overridden by the needs of an ongoing relationship – are ultimately governed by this dynamic. …

Lot of folks say that Edens and Lasry should pay more for the arena happen because “they can afford it.” The statement is true, but irrelevant. People – and billionaires are no different – generally do not spend even what they can afford, unless it is in their interest to do so. A person’s interest might include charity, but my guess is that Edens and Lasry’s desire to make a gift to a city from which they are not from and where they do not live is quite limited.

But these guys are in a bit of a trap. Right now, it looks like they have made a great deal. They wanted to own an NBA franchise (which can be a form of consumption for billionaires) and they do. In addition, the team is probably worth much more than they paid for it. As O’Donnell points out, with the NBA’s new TV contract in place, the LA Clippers sold a few months after the Bucks for two billion dollars. While the Bucks in Milwaukee are worth nowhere near a franchise in Los Angeles, it seems certain that they are worth more than the $550 million that Edens and Lasry paid for them.

So these guys are looking like winners. But, unless the arena is built, they lose that victory. They will no longer have their shiny NBA toy and, perhaps more importantly, someone else will enjoy the increased value of the Bucks. Edens and Lasry can keep the gain on the bargain basement price that they paid only if the team stays here. (While the Bucks in Milwaukee are certainly worth less than the Bucks in Seattle, it still appears – even in Milwaukee – that they are already worth much more than the sales price.)

So, quite apart from what they can afford, it is in their interest to contribute to the deal. You’ve got to give Herb Kohl credit for setting it up this way. While he made out like a bandit on his investment in the Bucks, he certainly left money on the table for his hometown.

But the reason that Edens and Lasry must throw in some money also limits the amount that they will throw in. Remember, to keep the team, they have to keep it here. And it is worth less here. Putting aside the thrill of owning a sports franchise, let’s assume that they believe the Bucks are worth $725 million and a little bit more if the team must stay in Milwaukee. They ought to be willing to put $150 million into the arena deal so they can hang on to that “little bit more” in value. (They should also factor in expected appreciation discounted to present value, but I’m trying to keep the example simple.)

So how much are the Milwaukee – as opposed to the Seattle – Bucks worth? How much will make the owners cringe and yet shrug ?

… and Dan O’Donnell:

The Bucks are a beloved sports team, yes, but they are also an important business to both its city and its state. As conservatives, we pride ourselves as being pro-business, free market capitalists who understand that to achieve economic growth, government must work with (not against) the private sector.

Whereas liberal taxation and over-regulation stifle enterprise and inherently view business as a sort of enemy to be demonized when convenient and always made to “pay its fair share” (which, as it happens, is determined by liberals in government), conservatism understands that private enterprise is a partner whose success shouldn’t be punished, but encouraged.

Encouragement, of course, does not mean corporate welfare, and this is why so many conservatives are so divided about the current proposal to use $250 million in taxpayer money to pay for approximately half of the Bucks’ new arena.

This is why I am so conflicted, because while I love my team, I also love my fellow taxpayers and don’t want city and state government to place an undue burden on them so that fans like me can keep wearing our jerseys and buying our tickets.

Remember, though, the Bucks are a local business every bit as much as they are a local team, and are as such a significant contributor to the state and local tax base. Each year, the estimated tax revenue from NBA salaries alone is estimated to be approximately $6.52 million. The NBA has just signed a new $24 billion network television rights agreement, and the resulting player salaries and revenue sharing cuts are expected to rise exponentially when that agreement kicks in next season.

Anticipating this rise, Governor Walker estimated that the annual revenue from taxes on NBA player salaries could rise 8% next year to a little more than $7 million and a full 25% to $8.15 million in 2017.

And that’s just in player salaries. The Bucks themselves also employ more than 160 workers, from coaches to trainers to professional scouts to ticket sales representatives—all of whom pay state income taxes and many of whom pay local property taxes.

If the Bucks leave Milwaukee (which is a near-certainty if an arena deal isn’t agreed upon), all 160 of those jobs—and the tax revenue they generate—would disappear.

Moreover, the most recent Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce analysis of the BMO Harris Bradley Center’s overall economic impact found that it “supports 2,350 jobs with an annual payroll of more than $73 million, while its net impact supports 1,068 jobs with an annual payroll of more than $29 million.”

If the Bucks leave Milwaukee, many of those jobs—and the tax revenue they generate—would disappear as well, leaving taxpayers to fund the maintenance of the facility without the millions in revenue generated by 41 (or more) NBA games per year.

Without those games, sales tax revenue on tickets, concessions, and merchandise would be lost as well. So would hotel tax revenue from not only out-of-town fans, but also visiting NBA teams, which typically have traveling parties of 30 or more.

Radio and television rights to broadcast Bucks games also generate tax revenue and help to support the salaries of hundreds of FOX Sports Wisconsin and Scripps Media employees, from on-air personalities to camera operators to producers to salespeople. …

In addition, a substantial amount of the Bucks’ annual taxable revenue comes from outside of Wisconsin in the form of the NBA’s revenue sharing agreement and luxury tax system under which the league’s more profitable teams in effect subsidize its less profitable teams. Last year, the Bucks made a whopping $18 million in revenue sharing and an additional $3 million in luxury tax payouts. That reportedly turned a $6.5 million loss for the 2013-2014 season into $14.8 million worth of profits that were then subject to taxation.

If the Bucks leave Milwaukee, all of that out-of-state revenue sharing and luxury tax money will leave Wisconsin’s tax base.

In other words, Wisconsin’s taxpayers would be out millions of dollars per year in corporate and individual income tax revenue and stuck with millions of dollars in BMO Harris Bradley Center maintenance fees that would likely not be covered by the Marquette basketball and Milwaukee Admirals hockey games and occasional concerts that the arena would still host.

Esenberg’s and O’Donnell’s perspectives are interesting beyond what they say for this reason: Esenberg writes for Right Wisconsin, a creation of the late Journal Communications, whose WTMJ radio has been the originating station for the Bucks for their entire existence. WTMJ and Right Wisconsin are now owned by Scripps Media (the broadcast half of the ill-advised Journal sale), which definitely has a financial stake in whether the Bucks stay or go. I haven’t kept track, but I think Right Wisconsin has run more pieces against the stadium deal than for it, despite the fact that Scripps stands to lose money if the Bucks leave. (WTMJ, in fact, dumped the Badgers in favor of the Bucks two years ago.)

O’Donnell, meanwhile, works for WISN, WTMJ’s competition, which could stand to gain by WTMJ’s losing the Bucks. (Perhaps, however, WISN has on its to-do list wrestling the Bucks’ rights away from WTMJ.)
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on The intersection of sports, business and politics
Journalism is the opposite of math and science

June 11, 2015

media
Nicholas Kristof apparently wrote this in the New York Times …

… So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce. A pound of chicken, 468 gallons. A gallon of milk, 880 gallons. A pound of beef, 1800 gallons of water…Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.”

Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.”

… which required multiple corrections on the Best of the Web Today Facebook page, beginning with Moses Lambert …

Any moron who thinks it takes 53 gallons of water to produce an egg is as stupid as a salt block. A chicken starts to lay when it’s about 6 months old. It lays an egg a day. It drinks a couple of cups of water a day.

A dairy cow produces about 8 gallons of milk per day. It would have to drink over 7000 gallons of water per day for Kristof’s statistic to work.

It’s tougher for me to gauge the water the cows drink, because the pond is replenished by the rain and I can’t measure it, but a single beef cow yields about 800-900 pounds and is butchered in about 2 years. The calf would have to drink about 1.5 million gallons of water for Kristof to be correct that it takes 1800 gallons per pound of beef.

I am surprised Nicholas Kristof has enough brain power to breathe on his own, let along draw a paycheck.

… followed by K.C. Jenkins …

How much water do you think it takes to grow the grain to feed a chicken per day? …So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce.” ??? That chicken gets 1.5 lbs per bird per week. Grain crops do use water, BUT THEY DO NOT USE IT UP. They take in water, then most of it is released by its leaves back into the atmosphere, where it ends up as rain, coming down to grow more crops, etc.

… and James Hankins …

The calculations in this article are total rubbish.

… and Mick Wenlock …

well Nicholas “Bag of hammers” Kristof is parroting some things he has read. The essential point that Kristof is missing (because he really is that appallingly stupid) is that it is the *usage* of 53 gallons of water that helps produce the egg. Not the DESTRUCTION of 53 gallons. Somehow he is conflating use with destruction. The amount of water trapped in the production of the egg is, of course, miniscule. Most of the water returns to the environment where it is reused. Even the moisture stored in the egg. It is a deception that environmentalists continue to use because they hope that most people will not actually go “huh?” and think about it.

… and Steve Aucella …

And remember, the Earth is a closed system. We have about the same amount of water now that was here on Day One, more or less. It just moves around all the time.

… and John Hudock:

The more significant point is that nothing really “uses” any water. The earth is pretty much a closed system with respect to water. The water that was here when the first humans started farming is still here. Water gets continuously recycled. Unless there are local drought conditions there is no reason to conserve water at all. Something I wish Al Gore understood before sticking us all with toilets that need to be flushed 3x.

Keep that in mind with the predicted deluge of rain today. (The closed system, not Algore’s low-flow toilets.)
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Journalism is the opposite of math and science
Obama vs. free speech

June 10, 2015

media, US politics
Virginia Postrel:

Wielding subpoenas demanding information on anonymous commenters, the government is harassing a respected journalism site that dissents from its policies. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York claims these comments could constitute violent threats, even though they’re clearly hyperbolic political rhetoric.

This is happening in America — weirdly, to a site I founded, and one whose commenters often earned my public contempt.

Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand jury subpoena issued to Reason.com, the online home of the libertarian magazine I edited throughout the 1990s. The subpoena seeks information about commenters who posted in response to an articleby the site’s editor Nick Gillespie about the letter that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht wrote to Judge Katherine B. Forrest before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Ulbricht was convictedof seven felony charges, included conspiracies to traffic in narcotics and launder money, and faced a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. The letter was an appeal for leniency.

Gillespie, who declined to comment on the subpoena, aptly described the letter as “haunting.” In it, Ulbricht expressed the libertarian ideals he said animated his creation of Silk Road — the same ideals that Reason upholds. The portion Gillespie reproduced reads:

I created Silk Road because I thought the idea for the website itself had value, and that bringing Silk Road into being was the right thing to do. I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else. However, I’ve learned since then that taking immediate actions on one’s beliefs, without taking the necessary time to really think them through, can have disastrous consequences. Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret.

Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit. What it turned into was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions. I do not and never have advocated the abuse of drugs. I learned from Silk Road that when you give people freedom, you don’t know what they’ll do with it. While I still don’t think people should be denied the right to make this decision for themselves, I never sought to create a site that would provide another avenue for people to feed their addictions. Had I been more mature, or more patient, or even more worldly then, I would have done things differently.

The letter depicts Silk Road as an attempt to bring libertarian ideals into the real world — a virtual version of the seasteading schemes for new countries, hopelessly naive, perhaps, but certainly not evil in its intentions.

Judge Forrest handed down a sentence even more draconian thanprosecutors had sought and made a point of condemning Ulbricht’s political views. “In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist,” she said. “Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its…creator was better than the laws of this country. This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.”

Whatever you think of Ulbricht or Silk Road, you can see why libertarians might be upset. A federal judge has just made the belief that it’s good for people to have “the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit” part of her justification for the most punitive sentence short of the death penalty. Her rationale offends libertarians on two grounds: It punishes political views and it punishes their particular political views.

The Reason commenters expressed heartbreak and rage. “Damn, it’s painful to read that letter. A life sentence for providing a platform for people to do what they do regardless — just making it easier,” Lady Bertrum wrote in the first response. “The rightness of his worldview bumping up against his naivety and arrogance is awful.”

Unfortunately, such ladylike responses aren’t typical of Reason commenters, who often sound like drunk teenage boys trying to one-up each other. They tend to forget that their online pals aren’t the only ones reading what they say. In his post, White described Reason as a “leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery.” Puerile they undoubtedly are, but Reason commenters are also harmless (unless you care about reasoned political discourse or the image of libertarians).

In this case, they were furious and, in their fury, some of them got nasty. “Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot,” wrote Agammamon. “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first,” responded croaker. “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,” commented Rhywun. “I’d prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well,” chimed in ProductPlacement. (Reason has since removed the offending comments.)

No one in their right mind would take this hyperbolic venting seriously as threatening Judge Forrest, who back in the fall had personal information published on an underground site, along with talk of stealing her identity or calling in tips to send SWAT teams to her house. The Reason commenters, by contrast, included nothing so specific.

As White notes in his post, which offers a detailed legal analysis of the situation, the comments “do not specify who is going to use violence, or when. They do not offer a plan, other than juvenile mouth-breathing about ‘wood chippers’ and revolutionary firing squads. They do not contain any indication that any of the mouthy commenters has the ability to carry out a threat. Nobody in the thread reacts to them as if they are serious.” Nobody even assumes the judge will see their comments. Why would she?

Venting anger about injustice is not a crime. Neither is being obnoxious on the Internet. The chances of one of these commenters being convicted of threatening the judge are essentially nil. Conviction isn’t the point. Crying “threats” just makes a handy pretext for harassing Reason and its commenters.

The real threats aren’t coming from the likes of Agammamon and croaker. They’re coming from civil servants in suits. Subpoenaing Reason’s website records, wasting its staff’s time and forcing it to pay legal fees in hopes of imposing even larger legal costs (and possibly even a plea bargain or two on the average Joes who dared to voice their dissident views in angry tones ) sends an intimidating message: It’s dangerous not just to create something like Silk Road. It’s dangerous to defend it, and even more dangerous to attack those who would punish its creator. You may think you have free speech, but we’ll find a way to make you pay.

How is this Obama’s fault? Obama is the president. Presidents appoint the attorney general, federal judges and U.S. attorneys. (And thanks to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, U.S. attorneys are now shown the door every time a new president takes over.)
Share this on …
X
Facebook
LinkedIn
Email
Print
Like Loading…
No comments on Obama vs. free speech