Networks Fear Obama Blowout
While the liberal media might be cheering for Obama -- McCain joked that "it's going to be a long, long night at MSNBC if I manage to pull this thing off" -- their bosses are hoping it doesn't happen so quickly as to spoil the show. Paul Friedman, CBS News senior vice president, said he has started to think “about what ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on October 17, 2008 17:11
The Western Media Respond to the Beijing Olympics
As I suggested over the weekend now that the Games are over and the correspondents happily back from their sojourns in China covering the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the Western media are singing a somewhat different tune than they were while the games were in progress. L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace. Yesterday a story in the Times of London reported on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 26, 2008 11:22
Michael Phelps the Greatest Olympic Athlete Ever?
I am a fairly recent convert to the sport of swimming. I've gotten into it as my son has gotten more involved in the sport. Tonight Michael Phelps has become one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Olympians of all time by becoming the only Olympian to win 13 gold medals over the course of his swimming career ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 16, 2008 03:03
Legalize Sports Cheating
John Tierney and Megan McArdle argue that we should let athletes use whatever performance enhancing drugs they want since some will cheat regardless of the rules and because our definition of "fair" competition evolves over time. The response to that, though, is obvious: many of these drugs are dangerous and legitimating them all but mandates them. John, an early commenter on ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 12, 2008 15:57
Mainstream Media Obsessed with Sex, Sex, Sex!
Cernig is outraged at the sex-obsessed American press. I am now officially disgusted with America's insular and navel-gazing punditry. En masse and on a bipartisan basis the media, commentators and bloggers have decided that the Edwards Affair story is more important than events in South Ossetia. What happened, folks, did your minds cloud over at contemplation of events beyond these hallowed ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 9, 2008 18:50
Olympic Stabber Attacks Coach’s Family
A bizarre and shocking crime has turned the opening day of the Olympics into tragedy. A knife-wielding Chinese man attacked two relatives of a coach for the U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team at a tourist site in Beijing, killing one and injuring the other on the first day of the Olympics on Saturday, team officials and state media said. The man ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 9, 2008 07:19
American Olympic Favoritism
Megan McArdle offers a defense of Americans from the charge that Americans are only interested in Olympic sports in which Americans are strong medal contenders, noting that we're a large country with established team sports loyalty and so forth. It's all true. More fundamentally, though, I reject the premise that Americans' America-centric view of sports is problematic. As Sir Paul McCartney, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 8, 2008 13:50
White House Press Corps Detained in China
Demonstrating the public relations prowess for which they're known, Chinese authorities detained the White House press corps for nearly three hours upon its plane landing in Beijing. The flight crew of the Northwest Airlines 747 had been expecting to park at a VIP terminal, but after landing was instead directed by the control tower to a normal international gate. White House officials ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on August 8, 2008 08:41
Chinese Terror Cops Get Segways
This story is a few days old now, but Noah Shachtman's post is the first I've seen it: Chinese elite anti-terror police officers are wheeling into action ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics on two-wheeled scooters. Members of the country's armed police unit practised on the Segway models that have been re-named 'Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles' in the eastern province of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 7, 2008 11:57
Bush: Skipping Olympics an ‘Affront’ to China
President Bush reiterated his intention to attend the opening ceremonies in Beijing and stated that doing otherwise would be an "affront" to the Chinese people. President Bush said Sunday he does not feel the need to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics to state his opposition to China's human rights record. Skipping the event would be an "affront" to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 6, 2008 08:25
