Ed Driscoll, Jonathan Adler and Glenn Reynolds take the New York Times and other mainstream outlets to task for their decision to not republish the stolen emails from climate scientists on the grounds that they were illegally obtained and written with the expectation of being kept private.  After all, these outlets famously publish illegally obtained classified national security information at the drop of a hat.

While that’s a pretty persuasive critique on its face, the comparison is ultimately false.

In the case of the East Anglia listservs, the victims are private individuals.  By contrast, the Pentagon Papers and various intelligence leaks published during the Bush era were owned by the United States Government and arguably kept secret partly to shield elected leaders from political fallout.  Nor were the latter “stolen” in the same sense as the former.  Rather, people authorized to receive the information shared it with reporters who are under no obligation to protect classified secrets.

What would be interesting is to see how the NYT and others handle illegally obtained documents from people with whom they don’t politically agree.  Have they republished similarly stolen emails that were harmful to, say, tobacco companies or investment bankers?

If so, then were have a much better case for hypocrisy.

Glenn Beck has a plan.  Actually, the Plan.  Which he reveals on his website.

Today, I have stopped looking for a leader to show us the way out because I have come to realize that the only one who can truly save our country…is us. To change America’s course we need to change ourselves, our expectations and our willingness to accept the unacceptable. When we refuse to allow our children to receive a trophy for participation, we are on the road to restoring the meaning of merit in our Republic. When we insist that no one is too big to fail, we will be able to learn from our mistakes, and when we demand that we are self-reliant, we will ensure that others can rely on us, not the government.

[...]

- Education is key, and not just for our children. To that end, we will be conducting a series of conventions. These will be full-day experiences where you will be immersed in learning about topics ranging from self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country. The first one will be in Orlando at UCF Arena on March 27th. You will also be able to vote to have a convention in your region by clicking here.

- I have begun meeting with some of the best minds in the country that believe in limited government, maximum freedom and the values of our Founders. I am developing a 100 year plan. I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting, using only the battlefield of ideas.

- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.

- On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.

The Soviets and Chinese Communists were famous for Five Year Plans that Americans used to make fun of.  Beck, apparently, figures that their flaw wasn’t the hubris of planning the next five years but stopping 95 years short.

Apparently, the plan has yet to be hatched.  It’s intriguing to announce a 100 year plan but tell people they’ll need to wait nine months and a week to get the details.

If nothing else, Beck has intrigued NYT correspondent Brian Seltzer and a few bloggers. Seltzer reports that Beck “emphasized that while candidates may align themselves with the values and principles that he espouses, he would not take the next step to endorse them.”

Mr. Beck is not the only media firebrand trying to mobilize Americans disaffected with a Democratic-controlled government. The radio host Laura Ingraham is inviting candidates to sign a 10-point pledge on her Web site. Sean Hannity, on his afternoon radio show and prime-time Fox News program, is promoting “Conservative Victory 2010,” his name for the map on his site that will spell out questions for candidates. And the former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who has a show on Fox News, has steered viewers to his Web site, where they can contribute money to his political action committee in support of conservative candidates.

Pundits have used their media stages to encourage political action before, but people like Mr. Beck and Mr. Hannity are taking on outsize roles now, political experts and conservative commentators say. One reason, they say, is the weakened state of the Republican Party.

Beck’s strangeness aside, the idea of reshaping the American political system from the bottom up is interesting.  But while I rather like the idea of pressuring the Republican Party to get back to its small government roots — even by challenging it with a libertarian oriented third party — there’s precious little evidence that there’s anything close to majority support for that as a style of governance.   Like it or not, the Republicans became a Big Government party in recent years because that’s what the people have demanded.

I still see enthusiastic small government types calling for dismantling the Department of Education and other bits of leftover rhetoric from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign.  But I doubt that even twenty percent of Americans are in favor of such a move.

The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well.  Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration.  And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that we’ll not only not cut back on the social safety net but that it will incrementally increase and periodically boom.   The “compromise” solution is massive deficit spending.

While we occasionally get Ross Perot types calling attention to the unsustainability of that approach, the excitement quickly fades.  While all of us can find big chunks of the budget we’d pare, there’s not enough overlap to get anywhere close to majority support — let alone the sixty votes necessary to get much of anything through the Senate.  And those who would face cuts to their subsidies care more and are better organized than those who want the cuts.

Dave Schuler likes to point out that things which are unsustainable will not be sustained.  But the nature of the American political system guarantees we won’t do anything until an absolute crisis forces us to.

For the second time in a week, Fox News has been caught using old video to give the false impression of larger-than-actual turnout at appearances of politicos they supported.  Sufficiently embarrassed at having been caught, Fox executives are promising “serious disciplinary action” for those responsible.

While the incidents add fuel to the fire that Fox is a Republican shill outlet rather than real news — and there’s growing truth to that charge — the real story here is that Fox has joined the larger trend in broadcast journalist of becoming a hype machine.

I was a big fan of Fox News when I first came across it a decade or so ago.  Mostly, I just watched Brit Hume’s nightly “Special Report” newscast, although I did occasionally watch some of the talking heads.  At the time, I found it a refreshing alternative to the networks and CNN, all of which had a significant leftward bias but pretended otherwise.  Fox — or, again, at least the Hume show of that time — had a slight rightward bias but it seemed genuinely interested in being “Fair and Balanced” and more-or-less living up to its “We Report, You Decide” mantra.

Somewhere along the way, it became both more partisan and more shrill.  Everything was Breaking News and hype.

The thing is, it’s not just Fox.

As I’ve mentioned perhaps too many times, I’ve long since drifted away from watching television news on a regular basis, finding the Internet a much more efficient and less aggravating means of getting information.   But I catch news shows from time-to-time, usually while traveling or because someone else has the television on.   And everything from “Good Morning America” to the nightly network news promos to local news radio is in the same hype mode.  It’s all crisis this, emergency that, and tragedy the other.

It’s like Jerry Springer is suddenly in charge of all news programming.

Still, Fox is in a special category because it is perceived as the conservative network.   Too many of these episodes and it will simply be dismissed as hackery by all but the most die-hard Republicans.

There are already a goodly number of conservative-leaning outlets such as Drudge, WorldNetDaily, and CNS that even unabashed Republicans are embarrassed to cite as sources for their arguments.

Fox isn’t there yet.  It would be a shame if it crossed into that territory, however, as there’s no road back.

A few months ago, when Ross Douthat became a New York Times columnist, I was pretty excited that the Times had chosen a fresh, conservative perspective for its editorial pages. Since then, I admit I’ve been a little disappointed. Douthat’s columns have, by and large, been pretty lackluster–there was none of the depth, wit, or thoughtfulness that made his blog a daily read for me.

However, this week Douthat has started blogging for the Times and I have to say that in one week of blogging, he’s already produced better stuff than his six months of columns. Go check it out–it’s good stuff.

Newsweek’s choice of cover art for its Sarah Palin issue has managed to generate controversy for three days now, finally prompting a response from the editors.  The salient passage:

To note that choosing that particular photograph has ruffled a few feathers is perhaps an understatement. Palin denounced it—and us—to her million-strong Facebook following last night. “The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this ‘news’ magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant,” she wrote on her fan page, adding, “The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now.” She also told ABC’s Barbara Walters that she found the cover “a wee bit degrading.” Others, like CBN’s David Brody, said our cover was a new low: “biased and sexist at the same time.”

Today, Newsweek’s Editor Jon Meacham has responded to critics. “We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do,” Meacham said. “We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard.”

As with June’s controversy over Sarah Palin’s toenails, the issue here isn’t so much sexism as it is contempt for the erstwhile vice presidential nominee as a serious public figure.  Indeed, the “theme of the cover” could not be more clear:  Palin’s a buffoon.  Why, it’s right there in bold text:  “Sarah” (not “Governor Palin” or even “Palin” but “Sarah”) is a “Problem” one must “solve.”  Lest one miss that not-so-subtle message, the subhead goes on to inform us that “She’s bad news for the GOP — and for everybody else, too.”

Now, as regular readers are painfully aware, I’m not a big fan of Palin.  I thought she was a disastrous choice for the nomination from the instant it was announced and hope very much that her brand of silly populism isn’t the future of the Republican Party.

Then again, OTB is a journal of opinion, not a news magazine.  You come here to read the signed analysis of our writers whereas, presumably, you read Newsweek for detached roundups of the week’s most important events.

It’s odd enough for Newsweek to have two opinion pieces on Palin, an out-of-office politician who’s peddling a book she almost certainly didn’t write, in the issue.  Let alone that they’re both negative.  (”Palin’s Base Appeal” by Christopher Hitchens and “Gone Rogue – How Sarah Palin Hurts the GOP and the Country” by Evan Thomas.)  But to add insult to injury by choosing to portray Palin on the cover in a way that they would never use for any other former governor or vice presidential nominee — male or female — is beyond the boundaries of objective journalism.

Yes, Palin posed for those photos.  For Runner’s World.  What she was thinking when she agreed to pose for the cheesy ones with the flags — which have very little to do with running or fitness — I don’t know.  At the time, I wrote that “Palin has crossed the line from politician to pop culture celebrity,”  an assertion of which I’m even more confident today.  But, again, that’s a fair point for political commentary, not for an outlet purporting to be covering the news.

UPDATE:  Until seeing some traffic to it in my referral logs, I’d completely forgotten about the “Newsweek Sarah Palin Cover Outrage!” from October 2008.  That one featured a non-airbrushed close-up of Palin’s face and a Jon Meacham cover story titled “She’s One of the Folks (And that’s the problem).” I sense a trend.

Ezra Klein points out that, while journalists like to think of themselves as intrepid sleuths, the best of them are social networkers moreso than detectives.

If you go back to Woodward and Bernstein, Woodward met Felt back when he was serving in the Navy, and the two men bonded over night law school and low-level positions with elected officials.

That’s not to take away from any of their journalistic achievements. Detective work isn’t entirely different — sources are created and cultivated, relationships built and leveraged. But in detective work, sources are sometimes paid, or kept out of jail. Journalists generally don’t have those carrots. And if you’re not going to pay people for their knowledge, then you’re going to need something that encourages them to tell you things they shouldn’t, and that something is often, though not always, the social pressure of a preexisting camaraderie (other candidates are the desire for publicity, or the fear of being hurt in a story).

But sources are never identified as “Warren Buffett, the legendary financier and my personal friend,” or “Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama confidante and someone I developed an improbably warm personal relationship with on the campaign trail.” Readers would dismiss the story out of hand if they were. But that is why Buffett picked up the phone for that reporter, rather than for all the other reporters who put in an interview request.

Presumably, too, this works both ways.  Because the reporter has a warm relationship with his sources, he’s more likely to cut him some slack.

None of this is ideal, of course, since it’s not transparent.  But a strong element of trust is necessary in the source-reporter relationship.  This is yet another cases (described by Shimon Peres and adopted as one of Rumsfeld’s Rules) wherein, “If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.”

Television executives have figured out that people watching their shows via TiVo-delay is a good thing.

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. Why would people pass on the opportunity to skip through to the next chunk of program content?

The most basic reason, according to Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm, is that the behavior that has underpinned television since its invention still persists to a larger degree than expected. “It’s still a passive activity,” he said. And those passive viewers are watching in numbers big enough to turn some hits (“House” on Fox) into even bigger moneymakers, some middling successes (“How I Met Your Mother” on CBS) into healthier profit centers, and some seemingly endangered shows (“Heroes” on NBC) into possible survivors.

Two years ago, in a seismic change from past practice, Nielsen started measuring television consumption by the so-called commercial-plus-three ratings, which measure viewing for the commercials in shows that are watched either live or played back on digital video recorders within three days. This replaced the use of program ratings.

At the time, network executives fiercely resisted the change, fearing that they would never get credit for recorded shows because viewers would skip through all the commercials. But the figures show otherwise. “It’s completely counterintuitive,” said Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC. “But when the facts come in, there they are.”

Almost across the board, the gains for playback are growing. The best preseason estimate for the current season, said David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for CBS, was about a 1 percent increase from playback over the live program for the networks combined. Instead, many are in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when DVR ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent increase.

There are two major reasons for DVRing a program:  Time shifting and commercial skipping.  Almost all of us do the former whereas not all of us do the latter.  So it’s only logical that the addition of DVR viewers who don’t fast forward through commercials to the live viewers would be a good thing for the networks.

I’m a pretty aggressive commercial skipper.  For that matter, I’ll fast forward through boring segments of shows (notably, non-political segments of “Saturday Night Live” and the non-roundtable portion of “This Week”).  But even I’ll occasionally forget to grab the remote and accidentally sit through a commercial.   Beyond that, I’ll intentionally watch commercials that may be of interest:  promos for movies that look interesting, funny commercials that I haven’t seen, or products that I’m thinking of buying.

Moreover, with the DVR, I watch far more television than I otherwise would.   I record numerous shows that wouldn’t be appointment viewing “just in case” I have time to watch them.  I also record several shows that are on during hours when my schedule doesn’t allow me to watch television.  And, of course, skipping commercials for products I wasn’t going to buy anyway allows me to view more shows because it’s easier to find a 40-minute window than a 60-minute window.

Individual shows have gained substantially. “House,” second among all shows in its live program rating (to “Grey’s Anatomy” on ABC), became the top show in terms of commercials viewed within three days with a 5.68 rating (about 6.53 million), gaining almost 18 percent. NBC’s comedy “The Office” had one of the single biggest gains — 26 percent from its live program rating — to 3.92 (4.5 million) for its rating including playbacks. The supposedly struggling NBC drama “Heroes” jumped 22 percent, as did another apparently flagging drama, “Fringe” on Fox. And a new ABC drama, the appropriately named “Flash Forward,” looks even more like a hit than it did with its original rating because its rating increased 14 percent with playbacks.

Many serial shows like “Lost” and “Heroes” would be unwatchable as a live show because of annoying and complicated plot twists and an erratic schedule.  But the DVR allows me to get several episodes queued up and watch them in bunches.  (Of course, that doesn’t fit into the 3-day window for the ratings companies.)

One other obvious reason why some shows do better on DVR than live is that the networks often idiotically run their most popular shows against other networks’ most popular shows, forcing live viewers to chose.  DVR viewers can either watch one live and record the other or record both and watch when convenient.

Andrew Sullivan passes along word that The Advocate “one of the oldest titles out there -  will now become a 32-page insert in Out.”  Which is apparently published by the same conglomerate.

Rather clearly, gay-oriented media are having the same troubles as other titles for the same reasons:  Increased costs, loss of advertising revenues, and competition from the Internet chief among them.

One imagines, too, that the mainstreaming of homosexuality means that there’s simply less reason to subscribe to magazines about being gay.  Not only are there plenty of gay-oriented blogs, ezines, forums, and the like but gay culture is part of the larger culture now.  Maybe not so much in small town America but certainly in the big cities.  And, more to the point, in mainstream magazines, movies, and television shows.

A new Pew survey shows a rather steep “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” with Republicans and Independents generally better informed than Democrats.

Mary Katharine Ham finds this quite amusing and also notes that, “if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops.”  She provides examples of the mainstream press doing just that on previous occasions.

We’d need a more wide-ranging set of questions and more replication over time to make any definitive conclusions about the relative knowledge of various partisans.   This does, however, seem to belie the recent White House-approved meme that Fox News and its ilk aren’t really news outlets.   The fact of the matter is — and this has been borne out over time — that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity are among the best informed people out there.   It’s not that those hosts are unbiased — Lord knows, they are — but because they draw an audience that’s much more interested in the news than most Americans.

CNN’s current business model is straight news, with the opinion shows pushed to their sister HLN.  But people actually watch Fox.

CNN has dropped to fourth place in the cable news business it invented. And Fox continues to rise while under fire from the administration.

CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – among the cable news networks with the audience that all the networks rely on for their advertising. The official monthly numbers will be finalized at 4 p.m. Monday and will include results from Friday. CNN executives conceded that will not change the competitive standing for the month. CNN will still be last in prime time.

That means CNN’s programs were behind not only Fox News and MSNBC, but even its own sister network HLN (formerly Headline News.) Three of its four shows between 7 and 11 p.m. finished fourth and last among the cable news networks. That was the first time CNN had finished that poorly with its prime-time shows.

The results demonstrate once more the apparent preference of viewers for opinion-oriented shows from the news networks in prime time. CNN has steered opinion hosts like Nancy Grace to HLN, while maintaining more news-oriented shows on CNN itself. When news events are not being intensely followed, CNN executives acknowledge, viewers seem to be looking for partisan views more than objective coverage.

Individually, the CNN shows were beaten resoundingly by all the Fox News programs, but also lost to all of the MSNBC programs, including a repeat of Keith Olbermann’s 8 p.m. edition of “Countdown,” which beat the 10 p.m. hour of CNN’s signature prime-time program, “Anderson Cooper 360.” Again that was a first. Mr. Cooper had 211,000 viewers to 223,000 for Mr. Olbermann’s repeat. That meant Mr. Cooper finished fourth and last in the 10 p.m. hour because, besides being well behind the leader, Greta Van Susteren, who had 538,000 viewers, he was also beaten by a repeat of Nancy Grace’s 8 p.m. show on HLN, which averaged 222,000.

[...]

CNN executives emphasized that the network continues to draw more viewers than all its competitors except Fox News when all hours of the day are counted. CNN released a statement Monday saying, “CNN’s ratings are always going to be more dependent on the news environment, much more so than opinion-based programming especially in prime time.”

Now, of course, none of this answers the question as to whether Fox is a news network or a partisan outlet.  (In my opinion — granted, as someone who has all but stopped watching television news in recent years — it’s both.)  But it does show what the people want to see.

I personally find most of the cable news hosts insipid, if not grating.  (The exceptions, ironically, are the faux anchors Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who manage to be smart and charming even while being partisan.)  But it’s human nature to prefer routine.  So, people who are in the mood for public affairs chat during prime time will naturally gravitate to their favorite news personality on at that hour and make that appointment viewing.

Indeed, the preference for host-based, periodic program over “whatever’s happening now” goes beyond news.  ESPN’s most popular programs are “Pardon the Interruption” and its lead-in “Around the Horn.”  Viewers — certainly, this viewer — are annoyed when “PTI” is pre-empted for some live sporting event such as the Little League World series or, say, women’s golf.   And the music channels all moved from showing videos of popular songs to more routine, familiar programming.

This is even more understandable in the Internet age.  People who are interested in news — whether about public affairs, sports, or the weather — can get it when they want it, how they want it.  There’s no longer much point in waiting for the 6:30 or 11:00 news.   Even shows like “SportsCenter,” which were a godsend 20 years ago, are now boring blather since it’s an hour talking about things viewers knew about hours earlier.  Indeed, it’s gotten so bad that they chopped off the last five minutes of “PTI” and hide it somewhere during the ensuing “SportsCenter” episode, forcing people to either miss the end of the show or watch a show they otherwise wouldn’t.  (Or, in my case, TiVo “PTI” for 90 minutes and fast-forward though both the commercials and non-”PTI” segments of “SportsCenter.”)

Postscript:  In terms of sheer business, it’s conceivable that CNN is making a good decision here.  They’ve essentially divided their network into two components, so  CNN and HLN both contribute to the bottom line.  The question is whether the amount of money spent on retaining name brand hosts 1) pays for itself in higher ratings and 2) offsets the cost of covering the news.

Topping Memeorandum is Mike Allen’s wild speculation for Politico about a presidential run by Roger Ailes.

Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO.

“Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that’s what we need now,” says one Ailes friend who is encouraging the Fox founder, chairman and CEO to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama.

Ailes, 69, has an aggessive, winning personality that made Fox News a huge success — and a huge target for liberal critics.

Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican pollster, said Ailes could be a force if he makes the run. “I have known Roger Ailes for 29 years,” says Luntz. “No one knows how to win better than Roger.”

Talk of an Ailes run, which informed sources said is based on more than mere speculation, could escalate the White House war with Fox war in wildly unpredictable – and fun – ways.

This is a befuddling idea.

To be sure, Ailes is a smart guy with good strategic sense and a command of Republican ideas. Presumably, he wouldn’t have trouble raising money.  And, until such time as he actually declared, he could get a lot of free air time on the most popular news network on the planet.

But he’s not exactly presidential material.  While one could make the argument that “media mogul” is better preparation for president than “community organizer,” he’s never sought elective office or held comparable positions of responsibility.  In modern times, no person has ever been elected to the presidency — or to my recollection nominated by one of the major parties — without having been vice president, governor, senator, or  a famous general.

I can’t see Ailes breaking that mold.  And he’ll carry the baggage of every silly thing that Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity has ever said with him on the campaign trail.

UPDATE:  Ailes has already dashed this one, citing an obvious point that I neglected to mention:

Fox News President and CEO Roger Ailes is laughing off the entreaties of some friends and associates and will not run for president in 2012, an aide said Friday.

Ailes replied when asked about the possibility, according to the aide: “This country needs fair and balanced news more now than ever before, so I’m going to decline a run for the presidency. Besides, I can’t take the pay cut.”

Can’t say I blame him.

Correction: The original version said no person had been elected president without holding major office. As two commenters rightly point out, Abraham Lincoln (who ran for senator and lost) did just that.  The circumstances were, of course, rather more unusual in 1860 than 2008.  Relying on more than my memory, I quickly discovered that James Madison had not been more than a member of the House prior to his election.  They seem to be the only exceptions.

Rush Limbaugh has gotten everyone from Media Matters to The Guardian to Andrew Sullivan to Paul Krugman to Raw Story to FireDogLake up in arms because he allegedly suggested that a NYT reporter kill himself.  Except that, to anyone familiar with either Limbaugh or the conventions of American English, it’s rather obvious he was illustrating absurdity by being absurd.

Here’s the actual quote, as supplied by Media Matters:

I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

Rather clearly, Limbaugh isn’t so angry about a silly blog post that he actually thinks Revkin deserves to die.  Rather, he thinks Revkin is an idiot with really screwed up priorities. Limbaugh is employing standard reductio ad absurdum logic here:

• Revkin argues that we should reduce the number of babies being born as a means of reducing CO2 emissions and thereby saving the planet.
• By that logic, “the planet” is more important than people
• Revkin should demonstrate his commitment by ending his own life.

Update (Alex Knapp): Actually, Rush Limbaugh’s big crime here isn’t “telling someone to off himself” — it’s plagarism. This is almost exactly the same joke that the late, great comedian Bill Hicks did in his act around 1991:

People pay lip service to saving the planet, but they don’t – they fail to make the big leap that if you want to save the planet, kill your fucking self. The planet will be saved without you. And what a delightful place it’ll be.

I’ll give Limbaugh credit: he’s stealing from possibly the best comedian of the 20th Century.

Stephen Fairey, the author behind the iconic “HOPE” poster that symbolized Barack Obama during much of the campaign and since, now admits it was based on an AP photo.

On Friday night, Fairey’s attorneys — led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University — said they intend to withdraw from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

Fairey admitted that he didn’t use The Associated Press’ photo of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney he originally said his work was based on — which he claimed would have been covered under ”fair use,” the legal claim that copyrighted work can be used without having to pay for it. Instead he used a picture the news organization has claimed was his source — a solo picture of the future president seemingly closer to the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama, underlined with the caption ”HOPE.” Fairey said that he tried to cover up his error by submitting false images and deleting others.

The distinction is critical because fair use can sometimes be determined by how much of an original image or work was altered in the creation of a new work. If Fairey didn’t need to significantly alter the image he used — in this case the solo shot of Obama — then his claim could have been undermined. Fair use cases also may consider the market value of the copyrighted material and the intended use of the newly created work.

Laurence Pulgram, an intellectual property lawyer who represented Napster in a copyright fight with the rock band Metallica, said Saturday that Fairey’s case was in trouble. ”This was a brain-dead move by Mr. Fairey, and it could be the turning point. His lawyers will still be able to argue that he made a ‘fair use’ under copyright law, but it’s a whole lot less likely that the court or jury will think that what he did was actually ‘fair’ if he has lied and tried to mislead the entire world about what use he made,” Pulgram said.

Leaving aside that Fairey is a liar and an idiot, his usage nonetheless strikes me as obvious Fair Use.   Yes, his venture was commercial rather than educational, making it complicated. But his work is extraordinarily transformative.

Beyond that, while I understand that photos tend to be accorded greater protection than, say, news stories, there ought be much greater latitude in the use of photos of ubiquitous public figures like Obama.   There are tens of thousands of widely-available press photos of the man.  It’s rather difficult to argue that Fairey’s transformation of one of them into a poster somehow limits the future use of that photo.  Indeed, this photo would likely have disappeared into the ether along with virtually ever other AP pool photo were it not for it having been rendered iconic.

President George H.W. Bush says presidents are “entitled to civil treatment and intellectual honesty when it comes to critics” and that harsh criticism “should not be par for the course. To the degree it turns off one student or one person from serving that’s bad.”

Now, I fully agree that the 24/7/365 political combat that is the byproduct of cable news (or, as Bush puts it, “the cables”) and the Internet has corrosive effects.  So, too, does the permanent campaign that grew out of that environment. He’s right, too, that it this poisonous atmosphere has likely turned some good people away from public service.

I’m not sure what to do about any of this, however.  The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to free political expression and the nature of instantaneous communication free of gatekeepers is such that incivility is almost a given.  And, surely, the fact that some student — or, even, lots of them — will shy away from politics isn’t sufficient reason to regulate speech.

So, if Bush the Elder is merely expressing his frustration at the way things are — or even calling on people to think about the effects of their style of communication — it’s all well and good.  If he’s saying government should “do something” about it, I respectfully disagree.

MSNBC video via The Swamp

Missouri native Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from membership in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams and keep them in the city.  This speeds up the inevitable conclusion fo the NFL’s owners refusing to let the controversial pundit join their ranks.

Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts. Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had become a complication in the group’s efforts and the bid will move forward without him.

Checketts told the Associated Press he will have no further comment on the bid process.

Three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners would have had to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh’s potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh’s potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh’s bid.

A Limbaugh spokesman told ESPN that Limbaugh would have no comment on Wednesday. Earlier, on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh was defiant, holding on to hope that he still could be part of the ownership group that buys the Rams. “This is not about the NFL, it’s not about the St. Louis Rams, it’s not about me,” Limbaugh said. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”

I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh here, in that he’s been smeared by made-up quotes and vilified for making perfectly reasonable and legitimate political arguments in a provocative manner.  Conservatives are frequently branded as “racists” and “sexists” and “homophobes” as a tool of stifling debate. While I long ago got tired of his shtick, I still think he’s a decent guy who’s made a lot of enemies with his act.  Given that he’s been doing three hours of live radio five days a week just about every day for nearly twenty years, he’s bound to have said quite a few stupid things.

Further, there’s an argument to be made that he’d be good for the NFL.  He’s a true fan of the game and loves his boyhood home, so he’d bring a lot of passion to his minority stake in the Rams.  And this bid is the best chance to keep the team in the city.   He could be an NFL version of Mark Cuban, which the No Fun League could use.

Among those making pretty powerful arguments against Limbaugh’s bid, ironically, is Mark Cuban.

The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems.  Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in.  Given that we will never know what the “next big issue ” in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is,  its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience.  The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself,  about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

Thats a huge risk that is not commensurate with the value a minority investment in a franchise brings.

This isnt about Free Speech. Its about the NFL protecting their business.  There is no reason to put it at risk.  If Rush were to retire from his show, or become a local DJ in Sacramento, or just about anything else he may want as a vocation, then I dont think they would have any problem with him being an investor in a team.

And, frankly, in the Age of YouTube, even a local shock jock would have the same issue.

Steven Taylor points out that the NFL is institutionally conservative on such matters:

First, the NFL is extremely image conscious and Rush makes a living going out of his way to say things that make somewhere between 30%-60% of the population mad on a daily basis (depending on what he is talking about).  As such, it is hardly a shock that some NFL owners are a bit skittish about welcoming him into their ranks.

The second business point I would make is that this is a case of pure capitalism at work:  private owners making decisions concerning with whom they are willing to do business.  Conservatives really have no ideological grounds to object if the NFL owners have found Limbaugh too controversial for their business tastes.   Heck, if Major League Baseball thinks Mark Cuban is too controversial, it is hardly a shock that there was pushback on Limbaugh from the NFL.

All of this does boil down, however, to the voting rules, as institutions do matter.  To wit:  for a purchase to be approved, 75% of the league’s owner have to agree on the sale.  There are 32 teams, meaning 24 had to say yes, but much more importantly, only 9 had to say no.   One of the simple facts that is often ignored by casual observers about super-majority rules is that they empower the minority substantially.

Add to that, by the way, that the League is about to enter into serious labor negotiations that are already extremely contentious.  No way are the owners, who need serious concessions from the players to realign the business model, going to antagonize the union — which is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans — by accepting an owner that many players deem racist.  (Now, if Limbaugh were the majority bidder and offering to substantially overpay for the Rams, it might well be a different story.)   Fair?  No.  But not much about the business of professional sports is.

Now, as Doug Powers and others point out, the NFL has some shady characters in its midst already.  But there’s a much higher tolerance for thuggish behavior on the part of great athletes than for prospective owners. Rick Moran notes, too, that the NFL has always been way behind the other leagues in minority hiring. But that’s really all the more reason for owners to be cautious.

Sean Hackbarth argues that Limbaugh has done himself no favors, either.

Rush failed to treat his quest as a campaign with the end goal being a stake in an NFL team. He played the politics wrong and lost this chance to be an owner. With better preparation the conservative giant would have better anticipated the attacks against him and eased the worries of certain owners during the firestorm.

As soon as he had an inkling to want to own an NFL team Rush needed to start laying the groundwork to make sure there wouldn’t be nine opposing votes. He should have started a process years in advance to soothe owners’ fears that he wouldn’t be an annoyance as an owner. Owners are businessmen who love football, so they would prefer to focus on improving their teams and growing their fan bases instead of dealing with the distraction of the latest fake-controversy created by Rush’s opponents. Running a business is partially about managing risks. Controversy is a risk that can be avoided, so it’s not a surprise NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said what he said.

Finally, as Tom Maguire observes, “Rush, love him or hate him he has made fabulous living being controversial and (that awful word) divisive.  That has opened some doors to him and, unsurprisingly, closed others.  Quel surprise.”